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DEBT AND GRACE, 

AS RELATED TO 



THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 




"Evil things are not entities; but good things are entities, since tL are of Gcd. 
who truly is." — Athanasius. 



" Here, at least, [i. e. respecting the view here offered,] let us hesitate, and suspend 
our judgment." — Witsius. 

"Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may he involved in some 
enormous error, of which the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed." — Vinet. 



FOURTH THOUSAND. 



NEW, YORK: 
EUDD AND CAELETON, 130 GRAND STREET, 

BEOOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY 
MDCCCLXI. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1857, bj 
C. F. HUDSON, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massacbusfttts. 



0^. i \m 



LITHOTYPED UY C O V/ L E S A D COMPA^TY, 
At the Office of the American Stereot3'pe Company, 
PHOENIX BUILDING, BOSTON. 



PRESS OP GEO. C. RAKD & AVKRT, BOSTON. 



PREFACE, 



Three opinions respecting the ultimate destiny of bad men, 
differing from each other by one or two alleged measures of 
infinitude, yet each held by confessedly good men, must be held 
with a common modesty and command a degree of common 
respect. So wide a divergence of honest belief reminds all 
that they belong to an erring race. In the minds of some 
the fact encourages a general scepticism respecting the future 
destiny of man ; and the same persons tell us that the Scrip- 
tures, whence so opposite views are supposed to be derived, 
must give little information and be of little value. Of those 
who prize the Scriptures as a Revelation, some doubt whether 
clear light on the perplexed ^Hibjec^was designed for man; it 
is better for us, they say, not to know precisely that with 
which duty does not concern us ; others are solicitous that 
the import of the Revelation here should be better under- 
stood; and all, that it should be more deeply felt, and also 
that the occasion for scepticism should be somehow done 
away. 

In a question of so transcendent importance, neither of the 
contested opinions can by a sober mind be easily exchanged 
for another. Such change can rarely be the result of a merely 
logical process; it will generally be attended with change or 
development of the moral feelings, and will meet friendly grat- 
ulations or fears. Yet because such changes often do not 



iv 



PREFACE. 



involve new states of feeling, it is a fair question whetlier the 
opinions themselves do not differ more as forms of thought 
than as expressions of sentiment ; and whether beneath the 
apparent diversity there may not often be a substantial har- 
mony. A discussion of the subject should elicit whatever truth 
lies in this direction. 

In the inquiry for the true one of the three opinions, that 
which lies intermediate between the others, —-which asserts 
neither the eternal happiness nor the eternal misery of those 
who may be worthy of neither, — claims its share of consider- 
ation. Can it be a just mean between two extremes ? Is it 
apparently supported by manifold passages of Scripture ? Can 
it reconcile apparently conflicting texts ; or can it vindicate the 
peculiar doctrines of Christianity against opposite objections ? 
Has it a respectable place in the history of Christian doctrine? 
Can it have been both held and lost by the Church ? And if 
so, how is the grand error involved in its loss to be accounted 
for without impairing all confidence not only in man but in 
Providence itself? 

It is easy to suggest such considerations respecting the view 
offered in the following pages. Whether such as make in its 
favor have had undue influence with the writer, he leaves for 
others to decide. He will only plead in behalf of certain fea- 
tures of his book, that his experience persuades him "a treatise 
on the subject should be — even more than it is argumentative 
— one of suggestions and helps to the reader's own thinking and 
investigation. 

To various friends he is under many obligations for the sug- 
gestion of facts and thoughts, for aid in the prosecution of his 
inquiries, in securing a favorable publication of the book, and 
in revising the sheets for the press. He is sure that any 
resulting development of Christian truth will be to them, as it 
should be to himself, the best reward. 

t 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 1. 

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
§1. The Rationalist Theoiy. — 2. The Christian Theory. —3. Influence 
of the two Theories. — 4. Combination of the two Theories. — .5. Effects of 
cf the Combination. — 6. The Dignity of Wickedness Page 1 

CHAPTER 11. 
EVIL AND GOD. 
§ 1. Natural Evil. — 2. Sin. Its Mystery. — 3. The Origin, Economy, 
and End of Evil. — 4. The Idea of God and the Conception of God. — 
5. The Four Theologies. — 6. The Notion of Evil as an Eternal Necessity 
is Dualistic. — 7. The Analytic Argument. — 8. Historical Illustration. — 
9. The Reaction. Agony of Faith. — 10. Absolutism. — 11. The Reac- 
tion. Prostitution and Prostration of Faith. — 12. Pantheism. The 
Eclipse of Faith 19 

CHAPTER III. 
THE THEODICIES. 
§ 1. Theodicy a Duty. Absolutism. — 2. Sin against God as an Infi- 
nite Being. — 3. Sin against God as Infinite Love. — 4. Sin as against 
the Divine Government. — 5. Universal Distrust. — 6. Sin as against 
the Universal Welfare. — 7. In suo Infinito. — 8. The Imperative Nature 
of Duty. — 9. Historical Eternity of Sin. — 10. Sin as the Greatest Evil. — 
1.1. Scientia Media Dei. — 12. Free Will. — 13. The Choice of two Infin- 
ities. — 14. Choice of Penalties. — 15. Infinite Motives. — 16. The Re- 
demption. — 17. Preexistence. — 18. Eternal Sinfulness. — 19. A Law of 
Nature. — 20. Phrensy. — 21. Restraint. — 22. Twilight 67 

CHAPTER IV. 
EVIL TEMPORARY. 
§ 1. Evil not Needful — 2. The Frailty of Evil. — 3. The Permission of 
Evil. Theism. —4. Is Evil only Now 1 — 5. The Triumph of Faith. 129 

1* 



vi 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 

§ 1. Is the Immortality of the Soul assumed in the Bil)le' — 2. Is the 
Immortality of the Soul implied in the Language of the Scriptures'' — 
3, The General Tenor of Scriptural Language respecting Man's Destiny. 
— 4, Passages supposed to prove the Immortality of the Lost. — 5. Cir- 
cumstantial Evidence IGO 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 
§ I . The Metaphysical Argument. — 2. The Psychological Argument. — 

3. The Moral Argument. — 4. Tlie Analogical Argument 227 

CHAPTER VII. 

SOUL AND BODY. 

§1. Matter and Mind. — 2. The Detention. — 3. PsychopannycJby. — 

4. Resurrection of the Unjust 243 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

§ 1. Eastern and Ancient Doctrine. — 2. The Grecian Schools. — 3. The 
Popular Faith. The Pious Fraud. — 4. Fourfold Doctrine of the Immor- 
tality of a Class. — 5. Early Christian Doctrine. — 6. Man's Intermediate 
Nature. — 7. The Origin of the Conflict. — 8. Results in the Eastern 
Church. — 9. Results in the "Western Church. — 10. Jewish andMediceval 
Doctrine. — 11. Modern History 265 

CHAPTER IX. 
PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 
§ 1. The Reflex Influence of Theodicy. — 2. Faith in Second Causes. — 
3. The Temporal and the Eternal. — 4. The Unseen World. — 5. The 
Mystery of Sin. — 6. The Advantages of Evil over Good. — 7- Theory of 
Satisfaction for Sin. — 8. Theology of the Feelings. — 9. Exegetical 
Causes. — 10. The Sense of Human Depravity. — 11. Lack of Faith in 
the Power of Goodness. — 12. Draco. — 13. The Notion of Punishment 
as specially Moral. — 14. Negative and Positive Evil. — 15. Anchorite Con- 



ceptions of the HeaA'enly State. — 16. Self-suspicion 357 

CHAPTER X. 
HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 
§ 1. Of Providence. — 2. Of Grace. —3. Of Death. — 4. Of Original 
Sin.— 5. Of Punishment. — 6. Of Pardon. — 7. The Redeemer 377 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEK XI 
PARADOXES OF PENAI-TY. 

§ 1. Fear and Shame. — 2. Severity and Certainty. — 3. Mystery and 
Conviction. — 4. Eternal Death is Eternal Punishment. — 5. The Second 
Death. — 6. Far and Near. — 7. Wrath and Love 40.") 



CHAPTER XII. 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 
§ I Vicarious Immortality. — 2. The Maternal Character of the Church. 
3. The Missionary Motive. — 4. The Campaigning Spirit, — ^. A Test of 
Christian Character. — 6. Gospel for the Heathen 430 

CHAPTER XIII. 
TIIF HIGHEST GOOD. 
§ 1. Life the True Good. — 2. Sensation and Motion. — 3. Thought. — 
4 Free Will. — 5. The Election, — 6 Virtue. — 7. The Atonement. — 
8. Faith. — 9. Love 446 



Principal Passages of Scriptures referred to, 
Index of Citations 



viii 
469 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE REFERRED TO. 



GEiraSIS. 

i. 2 208 

26, 27 166 

ii. 7 166, 250, 252 

17.. 167-171, 306-311, 

387 

iii. 15 215 

22 170, 242 

vi. 6 77, 427 

xvii. 14 179 

DEUTERONOMY. 

X5X. 15, 19. . 167, 172, 452 

JOSHUA. 

xxxiv. 18. 19 417, 458 

I. S.iMUEL. 

XX. 3 166 

JOB. 

X. 21, 22 209 

xxii, 4, 5 76, 400 

sxxv. 6 76, 400 

PSALMS. 

i. 5 287 

viii. 4, 5 6 

ix. 17.. 206 

cxij.lO 209 

PROVERBS. 

xxiv. 14, 20 180, 209 

ECCLESIASTES. 

ix. 5, 6, 10 262 

ISAIAH. 

xiv. 9-20 193, 215 

XXX. 33 45, 199 

xxxiii 14 204 

xl 7 58 

Iv. 9 70 

Ixv. 6 198 

Ixvi. 24 186, 198, 317 

DANIEL. 

vii. 11, 12 216 

xii. 2. 186, 288 

3 209 

AMOS. 

iii. 6 57 

MATTHEW. 

iii. 12 197, 303 

V. 22 211 

Tiii. 12 209 

22 177, 231 

29 361 

X. 28 146, 182. 211, 252 

xiii. 3-23 .'. . .. 239 

42,50 209 

xviii. 8 201 

xxiv. 51 210 

XXV. 41 201 

46 187-194 



MARK. 

iii. 29 194 

ix. 43, 45 197, 211 

44, 46, 48 198 

49 200, 201 

LUKE. 

iii. 17 197 

iv. 34 361 

xii. 5 252 

XV. 7 133 

xvi. 19-21... 210,253-260 
XX. 35, 36. . 161, 176, 254 

sxiii. 43 ; 257, 258 

JOHN. 

i. 11-13........... 387 

iii. 36 206 

V. 29 263 

vi. 63 173 

Tiii. 21 177 

xvii. 3. . 173, 242, 304, 806 

xviii. 38 58, 279, 376 

■ROMANS. 

ii. 7 236 

iv. 25 403 

T. 7 457 

12-21 389,390 

vi. 7 178 

8-11 176 

23 385,418-420,424 

viii. 6 174 

ix. 17-19 58 

22 150, 428 

I. CORINTHIANS.- 

i. 24 463 

V. 5 183 

vii. 14 390 

XV. 17 176 

22 176 

36^4 247,248 

xvi. 22 180, 181 

II. C0RINTHL4.NS. 

V. 8 256 

11 405, 410 

EPHESIANS. 

i. 11 58 

ii. 1 175 

iii. 16-19 468 

PHILIPPIANS. 

i. 21-23 2.56,257 

COLOSSIANS. 

ii. 13 175 

II. THESSALONUNS. 

i. 9 187 

HEBREWS. 

ii. 6, 7 6 

vi. 2 194 



JAMES. 

iii. 6 211 

n. PETER. 

i 4 2.31 

ii 12 231 

17 208 

I. JOHN- 

v. 16 197 

20 174,242,304,306 

JUDH. 

6 210 

7 201 

12. 179, 295 

13 208 

19 230 

REVELATION. 

ii. 11 178 

ix. 6 212 

xiv. 11 211 

xix. 3 211 

XX. 6, 14 178 

10 213 

15 146 

xxi. 8 178 

xxii. 11 117. 207 

15 .....210 

APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 

WISDOM. 

ii. 23 166 

25 214 

iii. 1-4 191 

xi. 5, 6 190 

xiv. 8-10 190 

ECCLESUSTICUS. 

Vii. 19 198 

xix. 3 183 

xxi. 10, 11 215 

JUDITH. 

xvi. 17 219, 220 

ENOCH. 

X. 6-9, 17 210 

15 195 

XV. 4, 6 218 

xix. 2 195 

xxii. 12, 14 217 

xxiv. 9 195 

xxxix. 2 217 

xM. 4 217 

Ivi. 3 218 

Ix. 7 21S 

Ixxxix. 35 213 

xc. 11, 13, 17.. . 195, 218 

xci. 3 209 

xcii. 16 195 

ciii. 5 217 

7 218 

cv.21,27 217 



DEBT AND GRACE. 



CHAPTER L 

THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
" What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him ? " 

What is man in his essential nature ? and what is his relation 
to God, to his government, and to an eternal world ? What 
principles, of justice and honor, of goodness and grace, determine 
the relations of God to man ? What does God owe to man, 
and what does man owe to God ? What claim of human char- 
acter entitles man, or what demand of divine law appoints him, to 
existence without end ? Is immortality God's debt, or his gift ? 
Or may it be either ? And if a debt, is it due to man's nature, 
or to his conduct, good or bad? Whence does eternity become 
man's own ? 

What is man? Respecting his nature and constitution there 
are various questions, not essential, yet very important, to be 
answered. Is the human personality simple, or complex ? What 
are the mutual relations of soul and body ? Is immortality a 
native vigor of man's being, or a life to be sustained by adven- 
titious aids ? What is the divine image in which man was cre- 
ated ? Is it still retained, or was it lost in the Fall ? Man was 
made a little lower than the angels ; what is now the rank and 
order of his being ? What is the dignity of man, either in his 
proper nature, or in the character he may form ? Does it com- 
pel him to become either angel or fiend, or is it peculiar to him- 
self as man? 

1 



2 



THE DIGNITY OF nUMAN NATURE. 



These questions are all asked in one other : Is man's immor- 
tality contingent, or absolute ? Was man created strictly immor- 
tal, or as a candidate for immortality? Is this his destiny, or 
his privilege ? Is it the stamp of his very being, or is it the 
sign of his maturity? Is it the retribution, either of holiness or 
of sin, or is it the gift of divine favor? Is it of law, in the 
economy either of natural or moral government? or is it of 
grace, and never to be charged as debt, though the offered 
boon should be refused and come to naught? And if it be of 
grace, and be so regarded by men, is Eternal Life more likely 
to be rejected and scorned, or Redeeming Love to be abused, or 
are the ranks of the blessed likely to be less full, or later filled, 
or God's plans to be frustrated, and the harmony of the world 
to be deranged ? 

Postponing the discussion of these fears until the truth shall 
be determined, we propose first to show that the dignity ot man 
is not impaired, but enhanced, when we regard him as invited, 
not compelled, to be immortal. 

§ 1. THE RATIONALIST THEORY. 

We here reckon as Rationalists not only those modern Neolo- 
gists who reject an alleged revelation of immortality, but all who 
rest the soul's immortality upon metaphysical or logical proofs, 
as if they were suflicient without a revelation. IThe rationalist 
theory seeks a general law of human immortality, — a necessity 
or nature of things, as distinct from the free methods of divine 
action. It subordinates the moral argument for an after life to 
the ontological. It regards the former as valid only to show the 
condition of the individual, in the immortality which he shares 
with the race. It infers the after life from an essence or a 
nature rather than from a character. 

This theory, preferring the laws of nature to the assurances 
of its Author, consistently seeks man's dignity in what he must 
be; that is, in a destiny. The adornments of virtue and holiness, 
and the attainment of heavenly glory, may enhance this dignity ; 
but they do not constitute it. It may be tarnished by vice and 



THE RATIONALIST THEORY. 



s 



sin, or obscured by the darkness of an eternal doom ; but it is 
not destroyed. If man can not altogether die, though his powers 
may be ever so much impaired, yet, as a moral being, he retains 
an imperishable dignity. If the first man was " a son of God," 
so are all men ; and they may ever claim this honor, however 
remote their descent from the common Father, and how far 
soever removed from likeness to Him. They may be bankrupt 
in virtue; still they are rich in the inheritance of ages. They 
may be decrepit with vice ; but the centuries of their being are 
countless. They may be hoary with guilt ; but He who made 
them shall not outlive them. Their being may be worthless, 
and worse, to themselves ; but they are immortal ; and however 
mean the place they hold in the universe, they may not be dis- 
possessed of it even by the King of kings. 

The early history of the rationalist theory is evidently Platonic. 
Plato himself regarded the soul as not only immortal, but a 
divine essence ; and because divine, it was preexistent and eter- 
nal. And the Jew Philo, speaking in the manner of Plato of 
the idea of man, says that the breath of life was nothing less 
than a breath of God, and that the soul of man was produced 
from nothing created, but from the Father and Ruler of all.-^ 
This view w^as first tolerated in the Christian church in the 
person of a remarkable man in the fifth century, Synesius. His 
personal history is interesting for the struggles he endured in 
exchanging some of his philosophic views for the faith of Christ. 
Bred in the Platonic school, but by his natural temper an eclectic, 
he had been attracted by the peculiar virtues of the Christians. 
While yet far from Christ, he sought relief from the bondage of 
sin, in prayer. But he looked for the cause of his bondage, in 
a foreign element, — the gross earthly matter by which the 
heavenly essence was detained as in a prison, and not in any 
corruption of the inward nature. He prayed, not to Him who 
appeared in lowliness, as a Redeemer from death, but to the 
"purifying God," enthroned on high. His prayer was heard, 
and answered in wisdom not his own ; by severe duties and trials 



1 De Mundi Opificio. 0pp. I. 32, ed. Mangey. 



4 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



he was brought, at length, to hear the glowing words of Chry- 
sostom and to the profession of Christ in baptism. For his 
amiable qualities and the hopes of his usefulness, he was olFered 
the bishopric of Ptolemais, in Cyrene, which he accepted with 
great reluctance, avowing his dissent from several of the charac- 
teristic doctrines of the Christians. " I shall never be able to 
persuade myself," said he, " that my soul is younger than my 
body ; or to say that the world, and all things in it, will perish. 
As to the Resurrection, of which so much is said, I regard it as 
a sacred doctrine, one of the secret things ; I am far from ap- 
proving the common opinions respecting it." ^ 

His views of the nature of man appear in one of his Hymns, 
from Avhich the following is a translation : 

" Eternal Mind, thy seedling spark 
Through this thin vase of clay, 
Athwart the waves of chaos dark 
Emits a timorous ray ! 

" This mind-enfolding soul is sown. 
Incarnate germ, in earth ; 
In pity, blessed Lord, then own 
What claims in Thee its birth ! 

"Far forth from Thee, thou central fire, 
To earth's sad bondage cast, 
Let not the trembling spark expire, 
Absorb thine own at last ! " 2 

The same sentiment appears in a well known modern poem : 

" The soul, of origin divine, 

God's glorious image, freed from clay, 
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine, 
A star of day ! 

The sun is but a spark of fire, 

A transient meteor in the sky ; 
The soul, immortal as its Sire, 

Shall never die." 

The poetry might have been as harmless as it is beautiful, if 



1 Kp. 105. 



2 From Hymn. 3. by Chales Beecher, 



THE CHRISTIAN THEORY. 



5 



it bad not become pbilosopby and theology. But such it has 
become, and still remains. An able writer says of Synesius : 
The old aristocratic intellectualisin of the heathen world reigns 
in him to the last ; but a kind heart often gets the better of 
philosophic pride, and he has much more of the Christian in him 
than the name." ^ 

§ 2. THE CHRISTIAN THEORY. 

But even Synesius seems to confess, for once, the paramount 
importance of the Redemption, and, in one of his letters, to 
assert this as the ground of man's dignity. " Man is a creature 
of high worth ; and he is such because Christ was crucified for 
hira."^ And here we are bold to say that throughout the 
Scriptures the dignity of man is based on the work of Christ, 
and nothing else. It was lost, from the moment of tlie Fall. 
Man's glory then departed. The race became culprit, under 
sentence of death. The common opinion that in the absence of 
a Redemption the race would have utterly perished in Adam, 
is a concession that man's whole being and all its glory is due to 
Christ ; and it is simply consistent to say that his immortality 
was from the first contingent and not absolute, and that out of 
Christ he still has no immortality. 

The characteristic of this theory is that it finds man's dignity 
in what he may be. His immortal life is not a destiny, but a 
privilege. It may have been also a birth-right ; but, once for 
felted, it is due to Him by whom it is recovered. Whatever 
the " divine image " may have signified, it claimed the attention 
and regard of God, no longer than it was cherished by man. 
Did it denote holiness ? it was lost in the act of sin. Was it a 
capacity for holiness, — a moral and responsible nature ? it was 

1 Brit. Quar. Review, 1853, Art. Neo-Platonism; Hypatia. (Eclectic Mag., 
Nov. 1853.) Compare Neander, Memorials of Christian Life, Part II. c. 1, 
whence our account is mainly derived. 

2 So Neander takes the words, Tifitov i^uov 6 avOpcj-og- rciiiov yap, el 6i' 
av-^bv eoTavpudTj Xpiaroc (Ep. 57). Yet they will bear another sense, making 
the actual dignity of man the reason of Christ's death; which is the rationalist 
theory. 

1* 



6 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



worthless, -when man became immoral and sinful. Was it lord- 
ship and dominion over the earth ? every child of Adam has 
come into the world to suffer because this dominion was im- 
paired, or but partly regained. 

With respect to our lost condition, the Psalmist might, then, 
wejl ask : " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? or the 
son of man, that Thou visitest him ? " The answer seems hardly 
to agree with the fact. " Thou hast made him a little lower 
than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. 
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. 
Thou hast put all things under his feet." The passage can only 
be explained as a prophecy of Christ. This is required by the 
true sense of one important word, and is so understood by the 
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As if he had said : 
" Thou hast reduced him (the Son of Man) to be lower than 
the angels,^ and him hast thou crowned with glory and honor, 
he is born king of the Jews ; he is King over all. Under 
his feet, and in him, under the feet of Mankind, dost thou put 
all things. The subjection is not yet complete ; but we see the 
One who was made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, 
crowned, for his suffering of death, with glory and honor, that, 
as a free gift of God, he might taste death for all men. It is 
the right of those who receive him to become the sons of God. 
He is the Captain of their salvation, leading them on to their 
proper dignity and final glory; sharing their nature that he 
might call them brethren ; destroying him that had the power 
of death, the fear of which was a life-long bondage ; triumphing 
over the grave, that he might show them the path of life ; and 
opening the gates of the Heavenly City to all who should prove 
worthy of its citizenship, and its crown of righteousness." 

And whenever the Bible speaks of the Redemption, it finds 
the occasion of it in no high quality of man ; he is never de- 
scribed as a lost child of wealth, or as a captive prince ; but ever 
as beggarly poor, and vile. His only star of destiny was the 
sentence of death. Not destiny, but deliverance from it, gives 

i'H\arrw(7af avrov Spax^ n Trap' uyy£?Mvq. 

J 



INFLCENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES. 



7 



him dignity. The Gospel offers him everything, and invites — 
with all the earnestness of divine love it urges — his acceptance 
But it obtrudes upon him nothing ; it compels no other choice 
than that which denotes the highest freedom, — the choice of 
all things or of nothing, and of the attendant glory or shame. 

And this idea of privilege is the peculiar glory of all free 
states, and of every condition of freedom. In the Grecian 
games, it was a high honor to be a competitor, though there was 
but one fading crown. In our own country, it is an honor to 
every citizen that he may aspire to any office in the gift of the 
people, though thousands, in a true or false ambition, should 
signally fail. In the same view it is the highest dignity of man, 
that, though he has once lost all, he may now, by a free adoption 
and a new birth, come to a boundless estate, a heavenly inher- 
itance ; where the good fortune of one shall not dispossess 
another, but each one may be joint heir with the First-born, 
the heir of all. 

§ 3. INFLUENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES. 

" Heroes," said Varro, " should beliv ve themselves the off- 
spring of the gods, whether they be so or not ; that by this 
means, the mind, confiding in its divine original, may aspire to 
nobler things."^ This intimation of an immortality inherent, 
superhuman, yet doubtful, illustrates, we think, the real nature 
and influence of the rationalist theory. It is partly illustrated in 
the doctrine of the Stoics, who sought the proof of immortality 
a certain heroism of human nature, an invincible energy 
which should raise the soul above the power of circumstances 
and of fate. But as the man of fortitude was alone worthy of 
immortality, he alone might expect to attain it. Yet this faith 
failed ; and che " wise man " of the Stoic school, scorning the 
w^eakness of other men, became himself weak. In his doctrine 
of suicide, he in fact sought to escape the ills of life by fleeing — 
he knew not whither. 

The Platonists sought the proof of immortality in man's ntel- 

1 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 1. 3, c. 4. 



8 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



lectual nature. It was not the stern heroism of virtue, but 
rather mind and reason, that allied man to Deity ; the capacity 
of knowledge was a divine thing. Not to say that this was the 
original error of mankind, desiring to "be as gods, knowing 
good and evil," it is certain that, with the later Platonists, the 
argument became an occasion for haughty and supercilious pride. 
He was most assuredly divine who gave most evident proofs of 
intellect, and the common herd of men were simple and brutish. 
They were of no account, in the estimate of humanity. The 
philosophic were of high caste ; and philosophy knew of no 
redemption for the unthinking.^ But the Platonic argument itself 
was as unsatisfying as it was flattering. No one could have 
prized it more than Cicero ; but he says : " I have read Plato's 
book (the Ph^do) over again and again ; but, I know not how 
it comes to pass, so long as I am reading, I agree v/ith it ; but 
no sooner is the book out of my hands, than I begin to doubt 
whether man is immortal." ^ 

The language used by Paul in comparing knowledge (yvcboL^, 
knowingness,) that puffeth up, with charity that buildeth up, 
brings us to the Gnostic view of human dignity. Of Gnostic 
doctrine there were several varieties, combining in various 
measure the Greek, Persian, and Hindoo systems of philosophy, 
with Christianity. It is worthy of notice that the Gnosti.cs, in 
their account of man's nature and constitution, used the terms 
7mnd (voOf) and spirit (Trvevfio^^ taken the one from the philoso- 
phers and the other from the Scriptures, as equivalent. Thus 
the Valentinians spoke of themselves as spiritual, and therefore 
immortal, by nature. What the Christians called a grace, 
or gift, they regarded as something of their own, pertaining to 
their very being, and produced at the same time with them- 
selves. They would certainly be saved ; not by reason of their 
acts and conduct, but because they were naturally spiritual. 
Others they regarded as psychical (^'vxikoc'), having soul without 
spirit, whose salvation was yet to be effected, and whose being 
v/as t erefore of less account. ^ 

1 The character of Hypatia, as given by Kingsley, is an example. 

2 Quaest. Tusc, 1. 1, c. 5. Compare Seneca, Ep. 102. 
s Ii'enoeus, Contra Iloerescs, 1. 1, c. 6, § 2. 



INFLUENCE OF THE TWO THEORIES. 



9 



The practical effect of this persuasion of an absolute immor- 
tality was such as might be expected. As gold is not tarnished 
with filth, so the soul is not corrupted with vice.^ And if this 
Gnostic sentiment did not suggest, it at least encouraged the 
fanatical delusion that the child of God might do the same things 
which would be sinful in other men, and yet be free from guilt 
by the magic power of faith. The most learned of the early 
defenders of Christianity, whose writings show an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the corruptions of philosophy, asks what man 
has to fear, or what urgent reason can deter him from all man- 
ner of vices, if he possesses a divine immortality ? ^ 

But when immortality is sought in a nature of things, and 
not either as a gift of divine goodness, or by assimilation to the 
divine character, the false faith brings its own retribution. 
There may be an immortality of things, as well as of persons ; 
the honor of living for ever may be shared by man, not only 
with the gods, but with the brutes. The Hindoo philosophy, 
which immortalizes all life, guards against this degradation by 
its doctrine of metempsychosis, in which the beasts are raised 
to human rank and are men in transitu. But what the Hindoo 
saves for human dignity in one way, he loses in another. The 
soul's liability to inhabit a brutish form is in itself a humilia- 
tion, and it destroys the dominion of man over the lower orders 
of being. It not only becomes murder to kill an insect or an 
animalcule, but all brutes must be respectfully treated, and men 
must share all their work and bear all ^neir burdens. What is 
lost here is, perhaps, sought to be made good in the degradation 
of woman, and in the distinctions of caste. 

The anthropology of western nations has escaped this doc- 
trine of equality with the brutes. But acute men have dis- 
covered that the common arguments for immortality are as good 
for the brute soul as for the human, and have found the dignity 
of man no longer in the bare notion of his immortality, but in 
the peculiar nature of it. And one eminent philosopher has 
endeavored to save the dignity of man by saying that the souls 

1 Iren^us, Contra Htereses. L 1, c. 6 § 2. 2 Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 29, 
Comp. ^scliyhis, Prometheus: "What shoula I fear, by fate exempt from 
death V" 



10 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



of animals are " imperishable," those of men, " immortal." ^ 
And he regards the failure of the Schoolmen to make this 
distinction as having brought "great prejudice to the immor- 
tality of the human soul." 

Between the reaction of gloomy doubts of an after life, and 
the depreciated value of an immortality common to persons and 
to things, we need not wonder that the heathen world grew 
careless of human life. As suicide became the necessitous vir- 
tue of the Stoic, infanticide was so prevalent a custom that it 
alone would justify the charge made by Paul, that the Gentiles 
were " without natural affection." It was never thought of as 
a crime ; insomuch that the poet Terence puts into the mouth 
of the same man who said, "I am a man — whatever concerns 
man concerns me," the command to his wife to destroy her 
child.^ The same direction is given in Ovid, by a man of 
exemplary piety and unblemished integrity.^ And in the same 
place, the prohibition of infanticide by the Egyptians is re- 
marked as singular : " Egypt has opposed very wise and 
humane laws to the practice of infanticide, now become gen- 
eral, and continuing unchecked by all other institutions." And 
Tacitus speaks in like manner of the Jewish regard for Infant 
life.'' 

Such, we believe, are the natural fruits of the philosophic 
persuasion of human immortality. The influences of the Chris- 
tian doctrine will be stated more fully hereafter. We may here 
name the remarkable fact, that as soon as the Gospel was 
preached among the nations, humanity, in every condition and 
stage of life, acquired a new value, and a peculiar sacredness. 
The life of man was no longer a common thing, but a peculiar 
gift of God. Its price was that of the ransom that saved it 
from death. Man's dignity was that of the Prince of Life ; yet 

1 Leibnitz, Th^odic^e, Part. I. § 89. 

2 Heautontimor. act.l, sc. 1; act. 4, sc. 1. 

3 " Vita fidesque 
Inculpata fuit." — Metamorph. 1. 9. 
* '* Augendse multitudini consulitur ; nam et uecare quemquam ex gnatis, 
nefas."— Hist. 1. 5, c. 5. 



THE THEORIES CONJOINED. 



11 



a dignity not imposed, but to be received by the personal union 
to Christ. Hence the sentiment, Destroy it not, for a blessing 
is in it," gave to man, from the first moment of his being, an 
inestimable worth, in prospect of that which he miglit yet be. 
Thus TertuUian, animadverting on the frecjuency of homicide 
among the heathen, boasts of the Christian regard for life in 
embryo : " It is a hastening of homicide to prohibit the birth ; 
nor does it signify whether one snatch away life that is born, 
or strangle it unborn. He is already a human being, who is to 
be one ; for the fruit is contained in the seed."' ^ 

§ 4. COMBINATION OF THE TW^O THEORIES. 

What was wanting in the doctrine of immortality by nature, 
could certainly be supplied by the Gospel. And the doctrine of 
immortal life as a gratuity to be accepted, seemed capable of 
philosophic improvement. Hence it was natural that some 
views of the early Christians and of the philosophers of their 
day should be interchanged. In the spirit of a patronizing eclec- 
ticism, the latter, admiring the virtues and embracing the hopes 
of Christianity, were ready to defend it by their own modes of 
argument. And they were willing that man's supposed inherent 
worth should be enhanced by a closer union with the incarnate 
Divine Word. The Christians, in their turn, were pleased with 
the weapons offered them to parry the assaults of the sceptic ; 
too often, perhaps, they hesitated to venture man's entire dignity 
on the work of a crucified Nazarene. The philosopher could 
welcome the assurance of an immortality which he had deemed 
rational ; the Christian could accept a rational defence of what 
j might otherwise appear an implicit and blind faith. The 
union of the two doctrines would be assisted by the proneness of 
man to rest in second causes, and to derive the weightiest results 
fxom some "nature of things." Why should not all created 
powers, — all laws of being, contribute to so great a work as the 
endless life of a human soul ? Why need this depend, either in 
fact or in argument, upon the resurrection of a human form in 

1 Apol. c. 9. Comp, Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, c. 35 (al. 30) 

I 



12 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



Palestine, or upon the attestation of that fact, and of the promise 
that He who had risen from the dead should, at the last day, 
appear as Judge of both the quick and the dead ? 

By a process so gradual that it is marked only by an occa- 
sional shudder at the remote consequences, and an occasional 
sigh at the beclouded glory of Christ, immortality, and eternal 
life, came to mean two different things. The former became a 
natural endowment, — the birth-righi of every human soul. The 
latter denoted rather an eternal happiness, and this alone was 
the especial gift of God through Christ. The one was a law 
of nature ; the other was a superadded grace. The Christian 
scheme of man's dignity, instead of supplanting the rationalist, 
was built upon it. The new wine was put into the old bottles ; 
the new cloth was put upon the old garment. 

§ 5. EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION. 

Besides the supposed gain to man's dignity, it was believed 
that the doctrine of an immortal nature was now secure from 
the presumptuous pride by which the philosopher had dishonored 
it. Immortality and salvation were very different things. The 
godless life and the godlike destiny, which had been joined in 
wedlock, were now thought to be divided. 

But the new idea — of an immortal soul to be saved or lost 
for ever — had a terrible import. Was the doctrine made up 
of compatible elements ? or, was a new conflict, within the 
Christian soul and the Christian Church, and destined to be a 
" Conflict of Ages," now begun ? 

There had been heretofore two problems, as old as the Fall 
of Man : Whence came evil ? and, Is there an after life ? The 
former was not, and w^as not to be, solved. The latter was now 
answered by saying : We are all immortal. But this doctrine, 
in its new connection, created a new problem of immortal evil. 
For the old philosophic theories of future evil, as we shall see, 
were never so frightful as this. The evils which had been 
feared were either confined to the domain of matter, or they 
were intermitted, — an eternal vicissitude, as in the fancy of the 



EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION. 



18 



Platonic year, or the Stoic notion of successive dissolutions of 
the world by fire. But now an evil absolutely endless and 
uninterrupted, changed only in a transition from earth to hell, 
from a mixed to an unmitigated form, and, perhaps, growing 
ever more horrible and intolerable, — such a world of evil was 
now to be feared, and to be accounted for. How should it be 
explained ? how justified, either as due to the sins of men, or as 
necessary, — subserving or overriding the power of God ? Wa? 
it sufiiciently attested, either in the revealed Word of God, or 
in the constitution of man or of the world ? 

Waiving, for the present, the debates and doubts, the struggles 
to vindicate God's power and justice, and to support the Chris- 
tian's faith, that have marked the history of the compound doc- 
trine, we may here show that it has not enhanced the value of 
man's being, nor promoted the dignity of his nature. 

Arguments to show that the doctrine does this, are often 
advanced. Besides the current exhortations to repentance in 
the name of an immortal destiny, this has been assumed in a late 
discussion,^ and it is ably stated by another writer thus : " The 
spiritual life, or the first stage of the life eternal, is a recogni- 
tion of the immutable Law of purity, rectitude, and love, not 
merely as abstractedly good, but as good to be applied to man, 
how disastrous soever the consequences of that application to 
him in his now actual condition. Better were it for him to be 
condemned by such a law, than to find himself villainously dis- 
charged from court on the ground that his nature does not admit 
of the application of a rule so high. Better that he should be 
condemned as guilty, than vilified as pitiable. Better for man 
to endure his doom among beings that have fallen, than that he 
should take his place among the most unfortunate of the mam 
malia." ^ 

And the same sentiment appears in common expressions of 
an insuperable repugnance to the idea of a soul ceasing to be. 

1 J. H. Hinton, Athanasia, p. 161. Eclectic Eeview, Aug. 1845. 

2 1. Taylor, Restoration of Belief, pp. 333, 334. Compare Atlienagora? 
Legatio pro Christianis, c. 31(al. 27); Baxter, as cited below, p. 103; R. Wii 
liams, Christianity and Hinduism, pp. 447 448. • 
2 



14 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



which makes the doctrine of the immortality o^ the good alone, 
distasteful to multitudes even of Christian men. 

But if we go behind the supposed terrible necessity of choos- 
ing eternal good or evil, the worth and dignity it confers on 
man's being vanishes. With the offer of eternal life, who would 
prefer the alternative of endless pain, to an end of being ? Is 
the mortgage by which an estate may be for ever lost, deemed 
an incumbrance upon it, an abatement of its value ? What, 
then, if, without mortgage, it were liable to be overgrown with 
endless thorns and thistles, and shut up as the escapeless prison 
of its possessor, — would it be of more w^orth ? ^ Would a par- 
adise of delights be desirable, if it might, for the misconduct of 
a day or a year, be turned into a burning desert for one's eter- 
nal home ? The sentiment which shudders at the thought of 
such a choice is immensely different from the dislike of all re- 
sponsibility, with which it is so often confounded. It is a senti- 
ment of our common nature, abiding ever, from youth to age. 
" I wish," said a child to its mother, when first told of an im- 
mortality for weal or woe, " I wish I had never been born." 
Must the child's reason, or even its faith, be satisfied, when 
the mother can only answer, "But you are born?" And as 
it grows up, shall it be better satisfied when the theologian says : 
" Thus a double necessity, natural and judicial, binds the guilty 
soul upon the wheel of eternal death ? " He must himself ex- 
claim : " At this fearful aspect of destiny, human nature pauses, 
and feels that, alas ! Immortality is not Life ! Her ravish- 
ment with the hope of an immortal existence disappears ; she 
stops, and, in anxious misgivings for the race, inquires : ' What 
must be the eternity of spiritual destinies already here begun ? ' 
From the presages of Nature she starts back with fear, and is 
almost ready to let fall from her lips the cup God has proffered 
of immortal existence." ^ And the hazard of such a destiny is 

1 For wlio would choose existence attended with a danger that so very 
much over halances it ? He is not a wise man that exposes all his estate to 
hazard, nor a good man tiiat obliges any one to do it." — Abp. King, Origin of 
Evil, Appendix, § 2. 

2 T. M. Post, Bib. Repos. Oct. 1S44. Compare the New Englander, Feb. 
1856, pp. 117 — 120.* 



EFFECTS OF THE COMBINATION. 



15 



" a mortal poison," says an eloquent preacher, " which diffuses 
itself into every period of my life, rendering society tiresome, 
and life itself a cruel bitter. I cease to wonder that a fear of 
hell has n: ade some melancholy and others mad ; that it has 
inclined so ne to expose themselves to a living martyrdom by 
fleeing from all commerce with the rest of mankind ; and others 
to suffer the most violent and terrible torments." ^ Well may 
we say in view of such a destiny : " If Christianity be true, it is 
tremendously true." ^ 

But the moral dignity of man's being can only keep pace 
with its value. If the necessity of choosing between infinite 
good and evil makes it poor, in the economy of happiness and 
misery, it is also worthless, in the estimate of virtue and vice, 
holiness and sin. For if man needs such a dire choice of 
motives to ensure a right choice, he is either infinitely weak or 
infinitely wicked. If the former, his dignity is nothing ; if the 
latter, his dignity is purely monstrous. Each supposition should 
be considered. 

(1.) Man is reduced to a dead thing, if he is so indifferent to 
his own well-being, or so insensible to the motives of virtue, that 
no gospel of eternal holiness or blessedness can quicken him 
into life. It is no compliment to human nature, to suppose that 
the affrightment of eternal whips and scorpions may impel man 
heavenward, though infinite attractions could not drav/ him 
thither. If there be such a man, he has no faculty of self-love, 
and no moral sense. His being lies in altogether another 
sphere. He is not human. He is no fit candidate for eternal 
life ; why an heir of eternal being ? He is an abortive work of 
nature, and the rank of his dignity cannot be assigned. 

There is a hymn expressing the sentiment of modern times, 
when men are supposed to be, through fear not of death, all 
their life-time subject to bondage : 

" Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
Between two boundless seas I stand, — 

1 Saurin, Eternal Misery of Hell. Am. T. Society. Tract No. 277. 
f " A modern writer," cited by Watson, Theol. Inst., Part I, c. 20. 



16 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



Yet liow insensible ! 
A point of time, a moment's space 
Removes me to yon heavenly place, 

Or shuts me up in hell ! " 

This wonder at man's stupidity contains a reproach of him, 
as unworthy of his dignity. It ought to suggest a doubt. If 
man was once exalted above these terrors, they were needless ; 
if he is so fallen as to be unmoved by tliem, they arc useless. 
But without asking if they are true, those who employ them, 
are ready, sometimes, in impatient despair, to contemn the un- 
moved as not worth saving. At other times, the riddle is refer- 
red to the infinite wickedness of men, which brings us to the 
second supposition, involving the doctrine of 

§ 6. THE DIGNITY OF WICKEDNESS. 

Guilt ceases to be degrading when it becomes immortal. 
Tlie conception of a wickedness thoroughly consistent, ever 
persistent, and eternally subsistent, is intrinsically admirable 
and sublime. Endless guilt implies the power to sin and rebel 
for ever ; and endless woe implies the capacity to suffer for 
ever. It is a godlike faculty, if one can say to evil, " be thou 
lay good," with a purpose that can not be broken through the 
lapse of eternal ages. It used to be said that a divine nature 
:an not suffer ; ^ but it is more true that only a divine nature can 
-.utfer for ever ; and by such invincible endurance the sinner is 
armed for eternal warfare against Heaven. A mightier divine 
power may imprison and restrain him ; but if an unconquer- 
able will can still revolt, the power of eternal anguish sustains 
ihe dignity. The dignity is enhanced, if one may contend for 
ever with justice, and tantalize retribution, by adding sin to 
sin and still more, if one may ever grow in fiendish capacity 
and malignity. If there be such rebels, they may certainly 
glory in the prerogative of imposing burdens, if not cares, upon 

1 " Who docs not sec that what is immortal, or uncompounded, can feel no 
puinV and that which feels pain can not possess immortality V " Arnobius^ 
Adv. Gentcs, 1. 2, c. 14. 



THE DIGNITY OF WICKEDNESS. 



17 



the divine administration. Well might one of those fallen angels, 
who are " angels still," say : 

" Or if our substance be indeed divine, 
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst 
On this side nothing ; and by proof we feel 
Our power sufficient to disturb His heaven, 
And by perpetual inroads to alarm. 
Though inaccessible, His fatal throne ; 
Which, if not victory, is yet rwenge." 

And the sublime fortitude had been described by an earlier 
poet : 

" Let Him then work his horrible pleasure on me ; 
Wreathe his black curling flames, tempest the air 
With volleyed thunders and wild warring winds, 
Rend from its roots the firm earth's solid base. 
Heave from the roaring main the boisterous waves, 
And dash them to the stars ; me let Him hurl, 
Caught in the fiery tempest, to the gloom 
Of deepest Tartarus ; not all his povv^er 
Can quench the ethereal breath of life in me." ^ 

This sentiment of the dignity of eternal rebellion, of course 
belongs properly to the old gentile conception of a divine 
nature without a divine goodness. It has been reproduced in 
the modern literature of the so-called " Satanic School."^ But, 
while it is too natural to the human heart, as we see in those 
bold and desperate souls who, abandoning all hopes of heaven, 
scorn the thought of moderate punishments in hell, — it is still 
a fair question whether it has not been encouraged by a false 
theology, and a doctrine of human dignity that talks much about 
Christ, yet is essentially unchristian. 

This question is made more pertinent by the very common 
notion that the eternal destiny of the lost is of great use in the 
economj- of the divine government ; that in immortal wickedness 
may be illustrated the nature and desert of sin, for the warning 
of new created beings, or for the security and higher instruction 

1 The Prometheus of Jischylus, Potter's translation. 

2 See Byron's Cain and Don Juan, and Goethe's Faust. 



18 



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



of the saved. Evil " may be permitted to subsist as furnishing 
the requisite antagonism and occasion to virtue." ^ But useful- 
ness brings dignity ; and if the lost are fit to be conserved as 
cliosen instruments of the general welfare, their immortality 
can not be without its honors. And though we may conceive of 
them as useful in spite of themselves, and therefore justly pun- 
ished, yet we must also regard them either as demented,— 
objects of pity and contempt, — or as knowing themselves to be 
overruled and employed for good, and perhaps claiming, with 
complacent shrewdness, that they do e\il that good may come, 
and suffer, not for their sins alone, but 

" For the advantage of the Universe." 

Which accords with the dialogue between God and Satan 
respecting one devoting himself to the latter : 

*' The Lord. Knowest thou Faust ? 
Mephistopheles. The Doctor ? 
The Lord. Ay, my servant ! 
Meph. He ! 
Forsooth ! he serves you in a famous fashion." ^ 

Men are ready enough to say that the means is sanctified by 
the end ; why not also that evil is dignified thereby, if God 
himself employs it for ever ? 

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 131. 

2 Goethe's Faust. 



CHAPTER n. 

EVIL AND GOD. 

"It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as 
is unworthy of Him." — Bacon. 

§ 1. NATUEAL EVIL. 

Because all natural evil is transient, a theodicy respecting it 
is little demanded by human faith. Yet the problem is specially 
difficult, because that evil is not at once derived from moral con- 
siderations. The sufferings and death of animals are calamity, 
but not penalty. And though there may be compensation for 
them in the system, in an enhanced variety and measure of ani- 
mal life, yet to the individual that suffers unduly, we knov?- of no 
compensation. All that natural theology has done, or, perhaps, 
can do, is to reduce the sufferings of the brute creation to a mini- 
mum ; and to show, if possible, that the brute, with no capacity 
for borrowing trouble, and all its pains reducing the term of its 
life, can not suffer more than it can enjoy. 

A theodicy respecting man's temporal sufferings is easier. 
Not to say that the most of them are the result of a fall, — either 
directly penal, or an admonition to seek a lost estate of good, — 
every case of unmerited calamity admits compensation in an 
after life. Sin and punishment aside, man may be no loser in 
the balancing of his pleasures and his pains ; much that he does 
suffer is the fault oi a querulous and ungrateful temper, aggra- 
vating the sorrows and overlooking the blessings of life. 

The natural evils which man suffers are also disciplinary. 
Virtue demands a sphere of effort ; and the ordeal has a specific 
value if it come in the form of hardship or pain. Yet, we ought 
not to say that the worst system is the best system ; for the 



20 



EVIL AND GOD. 



highest virtues would be so far imperfect, if th<^y were impossible 
without miseries that appear abnormal. Special virtues derived 
from the endurance of special evils, may, at least in part, justify 
the permission of them ; but they cannot be the final cause or 
proper occasion of human woe. 

§ 2. SIN. — ITS MYSTERY. 

We must admit an essential difference between Pain and Sin, 
or natural and moral evil, unless conscience be a delusion, and 
the auth r of it, God or Fate, an impostor. The power that 
rules the world has added insult to injury, if man is only unfor- 
tunate, and not guilty. The theory which makes conscience a 
false accuser would prove too much. Man must have fallen very 
strangely, to conceive of right and wrong as things more signifi- 
cant than pleasure and pain ; and of character as something more 
than an effect of c'*'^cumstances or an accident of temper. The 
invention of virtue and vice, merit and demerit, praise and blame, 
if they be fictions, must rank as the highest poetic creations. 
Have men indeed " become as gods, knowing good and evil ? " 

In the old question of the origin of evil, we must carefux^y dis- 
tinguish guilt from the facts with which it has been too often 
confounded. All the supposed solutions are only proximate to 
the real mystery. Sin is not mere imperfection ; it is produced 
by no limitation of human faculties. It is not a corrupting taint 
of matter ; the flesh cannot impose guilt upon the reluctant will. 
Nor is it the necessary effect of trial or discipline ; when that is 
severe past endurance, it is no crime to be crushed by it. Nor 
is it accounted for by any temptation of the Adversary, nor by 
any notion of a divided empire of the world ; he who chooses the 
wrong side in a contest between God and Satan, must have some 
other reason than that he finds two parties inviting? his allegiance. 
Nor can it be a needful lesson or demonstration of the nature of 
good ; it is not wrong, if it is the only path from inexperience to 
virtue. 

We only know sin as a perverse act of the free will ; a doin- 
of what we know we ought not to do; a neglect to do what 



THE TRIPLE PROBLEM. 



21 



seems in itself right, and which must therefore, in its final result, 
be for the best. It is a revolt of the will against an authority 
which cannot be gainsaid, — the conscience. It follows from the 
very nature of sin, that the method of its origination is a mystery. 
It may be referred to its true producing cause, but never to a 
proper final cause, as a valid reason. It is essentially without 
reason, — an act of un-reason. To assign a good reason for it, 
would be to justify it as a thing reasonable, which is contrary to 
its nature. It knows no rational or logical connection. It knows 
no law ; it is pure anomaly. It is the surd quantity which no 
theologic algebra can determine. It can be reduced to no intel- 
ligible principle; it bafiles explanation. As a causeless diver- 
sion from light to darkness, it has its only analogies in the sub- 
stitution of brute force for reason, or of the direct falsehood for 
such craft as may be deemed honorable in certain contests of 
human skill. But these analogies are only species of a common 
genus, and no solution of the mystery.-^ 

§ 3. THE ORIGIN, EC0N03IY, AND END OF EVIL. 

The first question of this complex problem, the famous Unde 
Malum, has been regarded as one of speculative philosophy. 
But we find that speculation can furnish only proximate solu- 
tions of it. We can show how sin is possible ; we can name the 
power and describe the circumstances in which it can originate. 
In a calculation of chances we may raise a probability of its 

1 " According to my conviction," says Neancler, " the origin of evil can only 
be understood as a fa^t — a fact possible by virtue of the freedom belonging to 
a created being, but not to be otherwise deduced or explained. It lies in tlie 
idea of evil that is an utterly inexplicable thing, and whoever would explain it 
nullifies the very idea of it. It is not the limits of our knowledge which make 
the origin of sin something inexplicable to us, but it follows from the essential 
nature of sin as an act of free will that it must remain to all eternity an inex- 
plicable fact. It can only be understood empirically by means of the moral 
self-consciousness." — Planting and Training of the Church, bk. 6, ch. 1, note. 
Compare Plato, Ep. 2, cited by Neander; — Laurentius Valla (see Leibnitz, The- 
odicee, § 412) : " We must, then, seek another cause of evil ; and I doubt if the 
angels themselves know it ; " — Miiller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, 11., 187 - 191, 
Pulsford's translation, and Kant, as there cited; — J, Tulloch, Theism, pp. 385- 
387; — J. Young, The Mystery, pp. 181, 215. 



22 



EVIL AND GOD. 



occurrence, as a contingency in the trial of countless free agents. 
But though a prohable event, it can never seem approvahle. It« 
becoming actual is an enigma beyond all speculation, which man 
can only solve by the plea of guilty. 

The Economy of Evil is the theologian's question. Unlike 
the sin of the individual, that of the multitude or of the whole 
race seems to suggest a solution in some general law, or in 
God's own plan. A single trespass of his command might be 
unworthy of his notice ; not so the long ages of a world's rebel- 
lion. Does He perniit, and yet abhor, so immense an evil ? Is 
it all against his will ? Here we easily forget that of the poet : 

" If not so frequent, would not sin be strange 1 
That 't is so frequent, this is stx^anger still." 

The sinfulness of every man is in fact as unaccountable as 
that of any man. The mystery is not solved by simple multi- 
plication. The extended fact may prove coextensive influences, 
circumstances, disabilities ; but never a necessity of guilt, either 
in man's act or God's plan. 

The End of Evil is preeminently the Christian's question. 

Lord, what shall the end of these things be ? " " Oh, let the 
wickedness of the wicked come to an end." Shall it be tempo- 
rary, or eternal? Shall it be conserved, and its conservation 
sanctified by reasons of God's necessity or justice ? or may it 
cease from the universe, as equally worthless and needless in 
the fair v/ork of creation ? 

The triple problem we have proposed has been the trial of 
the skill, the moral integrity, and the faith, of the respective 
classes we have named. In every aspect it affects also our 
views of God's character, not to say of His power and His 
nature. 

§ 4. THE IDEA OF GOD, AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 

That men should believe there is a God, the Maker and Ruler 
of the world, and that they should be agreed respecting His 
attributes, are two very different things. The idea of a God 



THE IDEA AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 



23 



seems a part of our mental constitution, and, as the rudimentary 
principle of religion, is the same in all minds. A self-subsistent, 
mightiest, wisest, and best Being is of course God, and claims 
the homage of all His creatures. But how shall His Power, 
Wisdom, and Goodness appear? — is a question to which there 
are as many replies as there are kinds of religion among men. 
The true answer gives the true conception of God, and the true 
religion. But between this true conception, and conceptions so 
false or so dim as to fade away in atheism, there are endless gi^a- 
dations. Men are not agreed respecting God's natural attributes. 
Some regard Him as a formless Spirit ; others, as having essen- 
tially a form, a body with its relations to space. With some. 
He is omnipresent by extension, — part here and part there; 
and eternal by succession of moments, — older now than Pie was 
then. Others discard such notions as gross and unworthy of a 
divine nature. And the moral attributes of God, even to godly 
men, appear as different as their views of what is wise, and just, 
and good. They conceive of God as variously as they do of his 
justice, Avisdom, and goodness, and they worship Him accord- 
ingly. They differ as to the highest good ; with some it is more 
intellectual, with others more spiritual, with others more social. 
And of all these men and their varying conceptions, we may 
say : " Like worshippers, like God." 

In one of the dialogues of Plato this distinction is finely illus- 
trated. It is agreed that the sacred (to oglov) is that which is 
dear to the gods. But it happens that the gods themselves 
differ, so that what is dear to one is hateful to another ; and 
almost every concrete thing is pleasing to some one of them.^ 
The great question remains, — what is the truly sacred, just, 
noble, and good, which all profess to regard, and which ought to 
be really dear to all? 

. The distinction between the idea and the conception of God is 
easily abused. We are sometimes told that all except those 
who have the absolutely true conception of God are idolaters. 
But we are not so easily hushed into modesty, when we compare 

I 1 The Euthyphron. 

I 



24 



EVIL AND GOD. 



ourselves with the worshippers of Moloch. We ask, would their 
god be worthy of divine honor, if he were real ? or would our 
God be unworthy of divine honor, if he were real ? On the 
other hand we are told that the idolater is a true worshipper, 
because his conception is that of a God. We answer, all wor- 
ship " in spirit and in truth " is with reverent inquiry after the 
truest knowledge of God ; false worship seeks to corrupt, or to 
ignore, a conception of God already too pure and holy. The 
one yearns after light ; the other turns toward darkness. The 
God of the one is Deity obscured by the dimness of human 
thought ; that of the other is Deity corrupted and un-deified by 
man's passions. 

The idea of God may be compared to the idea of a circle ; 
the child can apprehend it. The true conception of God answers 
to the doctrine of the properties of the circle, which human learn- 
ing has not yet exhausted. In a study of geometry, the circle 
may be so overlaid with illustrative figures, that the careless eye 
shall not regard it ; a subordinate or contrasted figure shall usurp 
its place. So men have deified some power of temporal good, or 
some dire evil. Thus the ancients had a whole Olympus of gods 
to their liking, while. the "unknown God," as a barren idea, was 
neglected. The God of the afi^ections will ever fill the thoughts. 

The distinction we have made will be respected by those who 
employ the a priori argument for the being of God. They tell 
us there must be a self-existent One, the Archetype and Source 
of all good, because all men have an idea of such a Being. They 
certainly do not mean that there is just such a being as each 
man conceives God to be. 

The distinction is vastly important. Freed from the abuse 
that confounds true and false worship, it still contains a caution 
to the true worshippers of God. They may dishonor Him by 
unworthy views and false conceptions. Fancying that they copy 
from Him, they may regard Him as altogether such an one as 
themselves, projecting their frail humanities as the models of 
infinite perfection. Theology may grow infallible and intolerant, 
mistaking a very false doctrine about God for a genuine doctrine 
of God. Or, when it is suggested that His character is maligned, 



THE FOUR THEOLOGIES. 



25 



we are told that He is of course infinitely perfect, — all men 
know that, — and he needs no vindication. This easy refuge 
from the conception to the idea of God, however, will betray 
itself. Agreed in the true idea of God, and developing it as 
best we can, by the help of the revelation in His works and His 
word, we may yet join issue to see if a prevalent conception of 
His character accords with that idea. 

§ 5. THE FOUR THEOLOGIES. 

The unworthy opinions of God wdiich denote a wrong solu- 
tion of the problem of Evil are various, but may be reduced 
to three classes ; which, along with the true solution, we may 
style the four Theologies. 

1. The first regards Evil as existing or subsisting in defiance 
not only of God's prohibition, but of His power. Either He 
could not prevent it, or He could not dispense with it. It is 
necessary, either as a fate, or as means to an end. It may be 
reduced to vassalage, but it cannot be eliminated or destroyed, 
without danger of greater evil. This theology, which makes 
Evil a power coordinate with Good, we shall call Dualism. 

2. The second confesses the omnipotence of God, but employs 
it in the introduction and maintenance of Evil in the world. 
Evil is a part of God's plan, expressly designed as occasion for 
display of His attributes. Sin is committed, no less than it is 
forgiven or punished, of His sovereign purpose. In one form 
of the theory, the distinctions of right and wrong are themselves 
a decree of God's pure will, and might be reversed at His 
pleasure. This is the theology of a divine Absolutism, or Des 
potism. 

3. The third is a natural reaction from the second. It rejects 
altogether the moral distinctions which had been rested in a 
pure arbitrament, and resolves all events into a course of Na- 
ture. In its higher forms it opposes to the dominion of fate 
only a divine indiscriminate goodness, or instinct of good nature. 
This is Naturalism, Pantheism, or Atheism. 

4. The fourth seeks to reconcile all Evil that has been or 

3 



26 



EVIL AND GOD. 



shall be with the Omnipotence of God, without sacrificing either 
His Justice or His Love, — His moral or His natural goodness. 
It must answer the question: Why does perfect Power and Wis- 
dom permit that which perfect Holiness abhors? The solution 
of this problem will be the true Theism. 

In a word. Evil is either God's necessity, — or His choice, — or 
of Nature, and sin does not exist, — or it is simply permitted. 

These four theologies will appear in their effects in the hearts 
of men. The first, creating an eternal conflict in the heavens, — - 
difficulties of divine government past all relief, — produces an 
Agony of Faith. 

The second, affirming that might makes right, and that the 
end will sanctify the means, encourages in these who possess 
power, the Prostitution of Faith. To the victims of its reason- 
less omnipotence it leaves only a Prostration of Faith. 

The third, blotting out this baleful light from the heavens as 
worse than darkness, bequeaths to mankind an Eclipse of Faith. 

The fourth, recognizing Evil as actual, yet hateful, leaves for 
man a Trial of Faith ; by which, however, he need not be over- 
come, looking for some " restitution of all things ; " in which 
hope the trial may end in a Triumph. 

§ 6. THE NOTION OF EVIL AS AN ETERNAL NECESSITY 
IS DUALISTIC. 

The most gross and bald Dualism is that which asserts two 
personal, self-subsistent Gods, one good and the other evil, war- 
ring against each other. But there are various forms of Dual- 
ism aside from the notion of an evil God ; and we shall define 
it to be the doctrine of evil as an eternal principle, 
whether this principle be taken as a Person, or as a Law of 
Nature. And with this definition we affirm 

1. That the doctrine of evil as an eternal necessity is only a 
refined form of the doctrine of evil as an eternal principle, and 
is essentially dualistic. 

2. That the doctrine of eternal sin or misery, as the result 
of an event in time, logically involves the eternal necessity of 
evil, and is dualistic. 



DUALISM. — ANALYSIS. 



27 



These propositions may be supported both by analytical argu- 
ment and by a historical induction of facts. 

§ 7. THE ANALYTIC ARGUMENT. 

The fact that sin is a result of freedom^ may seem to bar all 
argument respecting it as a necessity. But it should be remem- 
bered that two parties are concerned with the entrance of sin 
in the world, and the freedom of one may be the necessity of 
the other. The doctrine of future punishment sometimes takes 
this form, — that because man has freely sinned, God must of 
necessity expose him to eternal suffering, lest sin should be too 
free, and the welfare of all beings be put in jeopardy. 

But, it will be said, justice is certainly good and salutary ; 
and if the justice of eternal suffering can be made out, it should 
not be accounted an evil. 

In reply we ask : Is punished sin an evil ? It is made up 
of three things, — guilt, pain, and the justice which connects 
them. Now the guilt is certainly an evil in itself, and so is the 
pain ; the justice is doubtless good, or it would not be just. 
But what is it good for ? Punitive justice denotes simply 
this, — that guilt and pain are good for each other. The ex- 
ample of punishment may happen also to be good for other 
beings ; but this is an added consideration, extrinsic, and can 
never create the justice itself. Rather, the need of exemplary 
punishment, wdiether to restrain the vicious or to encourage the 
virtuous, indicates just so much imperfection and evil. Even 
though the eternal miseries of hell should multiply the eternal 
joys of heaven, it still remains a dire necessity if those joys can 
be procured only at such expense. And if the best results of 
punished sin cannot make it an intrinsic good, much less can 
the abundance of it. From the thought of its being extended 
through immensity, and continued through eternity, even those 
who think it useful in its place would shrink back with horror. 
Good as guilt and pain may be for each other, they do not form 
a compound of any intrinsic value. They do not, like the fiery 
oxygen and the poisonous hydrogen, which the just chemistry 



28 



EVIL AND GOD. 



of nature converts into a liquid blessing, — they do not add to 
the proper moral wealth of the world. On earth or in hell, the 
compound is no better than its elements, — evil, and only evil, 
and therefore it has no home in heaven. 

Even granting, then, for argument's sake, that justice should 
give sin and pain immortal wedlock, forbidding their mutual 
death-grapple, as when 

" The snaky sorceress that sat 
Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key, 
Kose, and with hideous outcry ru.=hed between " 

Satan and Death, and each are eternized, the inquiry remains: 
Can sin and pain be an eternal fact, w^ithout an eternal necessity ? 
If not necessary, then why actual ? If it is said that man, abso- 
lutely immortal, shall sin for ever maugre God's efforts to change 
his evil purpose, then he imposes an immortal necessity ujDon 
God ; and this becomes an eternal necessity, in the eternal reason 
for such immortality. The inverted pyramid, which grows up 
by occasion of a creature's act, expanding into immensity, and 
whose limit is beyond the zenith, must rest upon another equally 
infinite, whose base reaches farther down than the nadir. The 
irreducible Evil was already latent in the eternal past, with god- 
like omnipotence defying the power of God. If He could not 
create free beings for an eternal good, without the contingency 
of eternal evil, then the contingency developing as fact, betrays 
an eternal necessity and fate. 

Again, if this limitation of divine power is from the divine 
justice, then this attribute itself is enslaved to the sinful creature. 
The law, which was "holy, just, and good," becomes a carte 
hlanche which frail man may fill out as a sentence of infinite evil 
in the world. The norm of endless blessing, he may convert 
into the instrument of an endless curse. And if the germ of a 
world's welfare shall develop into a towering Upas tree, which 
no stroke of divine justice can fell, it is but an aggravation of 
the dire case to say that it is rooted in the depths of Infinite 
Goodness. 

Again, if eternal sin or suffering is supposed needful, to dis- 



DUALISM. — ANALYSIS. 29 

play the divine character, to secure saints in perpetual holiness, 
or to give zest to the joys of their redemption, — such a contrast 
of Good and Evil is precisely the old philosophic Dualism. 
Goodness is not sufficient for its own uses. Evil must form the 
background in the picture of the Universe, to render the Beau- 
tiful, the True, the Just, and the Good, prominent and vivid. 
The destruction of all evil would be the suicide of all good. A 
restitution of all things that should leave no trace of the Adver- 
sary's kingdom, would be a fatal victory — a signal defeat. 

In this view, though good, in its very idea, ought to be univer- 
sal, it must ever be in fact sectional. Its incursions into the do- 
main of Evil must be limited by certain bounds and conditions. 
" Two kingdoms, one of Christ and the other of Satan, will have 
their respective limits." ^ Goodness can never fill all worlds. 
The law that curbs the raging sea becomes its law Hitherto 
shalt thou come, and no farther." The wave c-T blessing must 
be stayed. God cannot" be all in all. Angels and men, and we 
know not what other races of God's own creatures, must be 
shared by him with the Power which He abhoi^. His advan- 
tage is in numbers only ; the contest is a dra wn battle in many a 
struggle. And we are often told that the immortal children of 
the Wicked One make ceaseless progress in their wickedness 
and woe ; in its dreadful way, Evil thus keeps pace v/ith Good, 
eternally. 

Now whether this dominion of Evil be maintained by a per- 
sonal God, or by an eternal necessity of things, it signifies little. 
And whether it be immovably fixed, or ever shifting, or ever re- 
curring, as an eternal vicissitude, — makes no difference. In 
either case the power of God is for ever inhibited, His dominion 
for ever limited. Wide regions of the universe can never be 
His own ; and whether he is dispossessed by a foreign Power, or 
by an adverse necessity, the empire of eternity is a divided do- 
minion ; and the true doctrine of that empu'e is Dualism.^ 

1 Augustine, Enchir. ad Laurent, c. 3. 
2 Our definition of Dualism is sanctioned by Kant (Das Ende aller Dinge), 
who regards Eestorationism as better in tlieoiy, but the received doctrine as 
better in practice, securing the sense of accountability. The following stat^ 
3* 



30 



EVIL AND GOD. 



§ 8. HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION. 

The Persian doctrine of Ormuzd and Aliriman is too well 
known to require extended notice. It is the most perfect exam- 
ple of a personal Dualism, with which it would be instructive to 
compare various systems of polytheism, and to show their simi- 
larity in the personification of one or more powers of evil. But 
our historic argument will be to show that the notion of evil as 
an eternal necessity leads naturally to the notion of a personal 
evil Deity. 

Parsism was itself polytheistic. Ormuzd and Ahriman were 
not self-existent ; they were the progeny of one who was called 
the Absolute, the Zerwan, " Time without beginning and without 
end," Eternal. They were the active forces of the universe, 
appointed l^y a higher Power, for reasons disputed in Magian 
debates about the Origin of Evil. There were various opinions 
also respecting these gods themselves. Was Ahriman the eldest 
born fallen, like Satan, through pride, and was Ormuzd called to 
vanquish him and take his kingdom ? Which was the mightier ? 
Was Ahriman to be at all worshipped or fearecj, while he had 
power ? We will not decide points which the Magi left unsettled. 
Zoroaster, who is popularly regarded as a rank Dualist, seems 
to have been a reformer, perhaps a martyr, opposing the preva- 

ments in an able defence of the received doctnne will farther waiTant our use 
of terms : " Either sin is for God altogether unconquerable, and then itself can 
never be God's choice, and there would be an iiTeducible power in the world, 
opposed to God. This is precise and express Manichseism ; for there remains 
only to give this power a Principle, to which a godhke power is due. Whether 
now this Principle be called Devil or Ahriman, it makes no difference," He 
proceeds: If this resort is forbidden for him v/ho would be no Manichaan, 
then there remains only this, — that sin is indeed conquerable by the power of 
God, but that it is, nevertheless, not actually reduced at the end of the world. 
Eveiy one sees the contradiction involved in this ; for then we may suppose, in- 
stead of the world with sin, another condition of it without sin, and every way 
more perfect ; so that there should be after the end of the world a higher form 
of its development ; that is, the end is not the end. Thus it hes in the idea of 
the world, so far as it is to be an expression of tlie divme nature, that at the end 
all sin must be entirely and thoroughly done away; and this is, indispu- 
tably, the truth in the doctrine of Rep«-:ration Avhich has obtained for it, over 
against a comfortless Manicha;isD^ ; ever and again, adherents." Heinrich Erb- 
iam. Studien und Kritikeu> 1838, No. II., p. 409. 



DUALISM. — 1TB HISTORY. 



31 



lent fear of Ahriman as a superstition. Ormiizd, he knew, ouff/u 
to prevail, and therefore men might safely confide in him.^ It 
was agreed, however, that though Ahriman might be reduced or 
destroyed, he was the cause of all evil ; and the Greek historian 
gives us some glimpses of an anthropology corresponding to this 
Dualism, in the strong expressions of a Persian who in an hour 
of severe temptation was quite certain that he had two souls.^ 

The Hindoo Siva, or Destroyer, is too unlike the evil God of 
the Persians to be regarded as a counterpart. He is not malig- 
nant ; what he destroys he reproduces. Still the triad of 
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is akin to the Persian Dualism, as 
showing the Oriental proneness to attribute personal being to the 
primary and contrasted powers of the world. 

The Greeks knew better how to think abstractly; and the 
early philosophers could explain the origin of evil without im- 
peaching any divine being as its cause. It was the work of Fate. 
And though some atheists made Fate or Chance the cause of all 
things, good and bad, yet, in the more religious opinion, Fate 
(NLolpa) or Necessity ('AvayKr]) was especially the cause of Evil. 
Hence the Stoics made virtue itself to consist in patiently endur- 
ing what even the gods could not avert. And the chief interest 
of the ancient tragedy is in the fact that even justice and right 
are powerless before a relentless Destiny. " Man conquered by 
circumstances," is the ancient idea, in contrast with the modern, 
— "Man conquering circumstances." This power was in due 
time personified in the beautiful myth of the Parcfe, — Clotho, 
Lacliesis, and Atropos, presiding over the destinies of men. 

But even for fated evil, the human mind must seek a reason. 
And the efibrt to find this produced the oldest system of philo- 
sophic Dualism, the essential features of which may be found in 
almost every subsequent theology, and with frequent relapse into 
the notion of a personal evil God. This was the Pythagorean 
doctrine of opposite qualities as necessary to each other. There 
can be no even number without an odd number. Day and night, 
light and darkness, heat and cold, seem to rest each in the bosom 



1 Maurice, Anc. Pliil., c. 5. 2 Xenophon, Cyropsedia, 1. 6, c. 1, § 41 



32 



EVIL AND GOD. 



of the other. There can be nothing straight, but in contrast with 
the crooked. Such contrasts meet us continually ; and the con- 
ception of any thing seems most vivid and complete, Avhen 
coupled with the conception of its opposite. By a sort of a priori 
reasoning it was argued that nothing can exist without its oppo- 
site. Hence were inferred good and evil principles of all things, 
which might be named from any pair of opposite qualities, as one 
and many, right and left, straight and crooked, symmetrical and 
shapeless, composed and restless, light and dark.^ In the meta- 
physics of Aristotle these principles were distinguished, as form 
(nop(j)7]') and privation (aripTjoLc). In the theology of Plato this 
contrast of good and evil appears as a Battle of the Universe, an 
immortal conflict, greater than all other conflicts, and requirbig 
a most wonderful care and vigilance." "All nature and all 
worlds rise into deeply interested parties in this immortal strife. 
Order is everywhere struggling with disorder. Light is contend- 
ing with darkness ; truth with error ; knowledge with ignorance. 
The science of medicine is fighting with disease; agriculture 
with the hostile stubbornness of the earth ; art and science of 
every kind with rude and savage life. On a higher scale, the 
virtues are personified as in conflict with our sins Righteous- 
ness is engaged in a strife w^hich knows no compromise with 
unrighteousness. Temperance maintains an unintermitting strug- 
gle with her most powerful and unyielding antagonist. To 
crown all, God himself and the celestial powers are represented 
as everywhere contending with the evil soul, and with the dark, 
mindless, disorderly spirit of Matter." ^ 

To the Persian doctrine it is w^ell known that Isaiah alludes, 
when he speaks of Jehovah as having called Cyrus to his work, 
unmoved by any rivalry of adverse powers. "I am Jehovah, 
and none else ; beside me there is no God ; I will gird thee, 
though thou hast not known me. ... I am Jehovah, and 
none else ; forming light, and creating darkness ; making peace. 

1 The Pythagoreans added such distinctions as finite and infinite^ one and two, 
square and oblong. See Cudworth, Intell. System, b. 1, c. 4, § 20. 

2 Tayler Lewis, Plato against the Atheists. Excursus Ixvi. 



DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 



33 



and creating evil : I Jehovah am the author of all these things."^ 
Homer had approached the doctrine of the divine supremac}', 
where he speaks of Jupiter as permitting and controlling evil as 
well as good.^ For this he is censured by Plato, as implicating 
the divine goodness. " God," says he, " doeth nothing evil, nor 
could He be the cause of anything evil. The Good, therefore, 
cannot be the author of all things, but only of those that are good, 
while He is never the author of the bad. God, therefore, cannot 
be the author of all things, as the many say, but only of few 
things is He the cause to man ; for our good things are much 
fewer in number than our evil things. Of evil things, then, we 
must seek some other cause, and not the Deity." ^ Of this other 
cause Plato elsewhere speaks thus : " For God, wishing that all 
things should be good, and that there should be nothing bad, 
thus taking in hand the visible (or material), never at rest, but 
ever moving about in a strange and disorderly manner, reduced it 
as far as He could from disorder to order. For it is morally 
impossible for the best Being to do anything else but the best." ^ 
And in another passage this disorderly s^a^^of matter appears 
as a personal evil soul in the world': "The soul is the cause of 
all things good and, evil, honorable and base, just and unjust, and 
of all contraries, if it is the cause of all tlafegs. The soul, then, 
that rules all things in their diverse ways, is not one, but mani- 
fold. We must suppose no less than tw^o, — th^e one beneficent, 
and the other able to do the contrary."^ 

Such is the Platonic solution of the Pythagorean solution of 
the origin of evil. The law of contraries must be executed by 
opposing gods. 

Four hundred years later, the philosophic doctrine is asserted 
again by Philo. Having defined the phrase, " They died before 
the Lord," ^ to mean " they lived," he proceeds to speak of the 
punishment of Cain. " We find," he says, " no account in the 
Law of the death of Cain, the wicked fratricide, but this declara- 
tion : ' The Lord God put a mark upon Cain, lest any one find- 



1 Ch. xlv. 5-7. Lowth's Trans. 

8 Republic, b. 2. 

5 Laws, b. 10, p. 896, d. e. 



2 Iliad, xxiv. 527-530. 
4 Tima3us, p. 879, c.d. 30, a. 
6 Lev. X. 2 ; Num. iii. 4. 



34 



EVIL AND GOD. 



ing him should slay him.' And why ? It was, I think, because 
impiety is an interminable evil, which, once kindled, can 
never be extinguished. With which agrees that of the Poet : 

'H 6c TOL ov dvriTTj, akV udavaTOv kukov egtlv. 

' Evil is an immortal thing, no death can efface it/ 

Immortal in the present life, though before God it be a lifeless 
and dead thing, and, as a certain one says, like a dung-clod. 
But it behoved that diverse spheres should be assigned to things 
diverse; heaven to the good; to evil^ the confines of earth. 
Therefore, the good tends upward, though sometimes it descends 
to us (for the Father thereof is bountiful), but it desires natur- 
ally to return home again. But evil abides here, removed as 
far as possible from the heavenly choir, flitting about this mor- 
tal life, and unable, by any death of its own, to leave mortal 
kind. Of which we have an eloquent witness among the wise 
men, in Theastetus, thus : ' Evil cannot be utterly rooted out and 
destroyed ; for there must ever be something opposite to the 
good. Bu"" as it can have no place among the heavenly beings, 
it is forced to sojourn with mortal nature, and in these earthly 
abodes. Wherefore we should strive to flee heavenward as soon 
as we may ; and we do thus flee, if we do our utmost to become 
like God.' ^ Cain, then, does not die ; which signifies that evil 
will ever live, in a deadly sort, with men. Wherefore it was 
fitly said that the manslayer should die the death, [in the sense 
and] for the reasons just given." ^ 

In Plutarch we find the utilitarian defence of the dualistic 
system, for which Plato seems to have cared nothing. " It is 
impossible," says he, " that all created things should be produced 
by one only cause, whether good or bad ; for God is not the cause 
of any evil. But the harmony of this world is made up of con- 
traries, as a lyre is compounded of base and treble. 

' Good never is fi-om evil separate ; 
One with the other is for ever mixed, 
For the advantage of the universe.' 



1 Plato, Theaetetus, p. 176. 2 De Profugis. 0pp. I., 555 (al. 469), 



DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 



35 



This is the sentiment of the greatest poet (Euripides), and of 
the wisest of the ancients ; for some of them believed there 
were two gods, who pursued opposite ends ; one the author of 
all good, the other of all evil. Some call the author of good, 
God ; and the other, Daemon." ^ 

In the passage just cited from Philo, the reader will have 
discovered the sentiment that matter is inherently corrupt. 
This was the Gnostic doctrine, so notorious in the early history 
of Christianity. It was the heresy which so often led to the 
denial of Christ's real incarnation. The most eminent assertors 
of this doctrine were Saturninus, Basilides, Valentinus, and 
Marcion, who all regarded matter, in its brute resistance and 
blind hostility to the divine power, as the evil principle. Gnos- 
tic speculations were not repressed, but rather promoted, by the 
persecutions of that age. " Deeper systems," says Bunsen, 
" stirred up the religious and thoughtful mind of the times. It 
was, in particular, the old Oriental Dualism, that child both of 
a deep sense of the cause of sin, and of the wickedness and 
oppression of the ruling powers on earth, which now tried to 
establish itself as a Christian element." ^ 

We have met with the suggestion that the phrase, " opposi- 
tions of science (■yvuaig) falsely so called" (1 Tim. vi. 20), is an 
allusion to the Gnostic theory of contrasted good and evil ; but 
we are not prepared to adopt it. Conybeare and Howson refer 
the expression to the vain babblings and logomachies before 
named. But, declining a reference to the contrasts between 
Law and Gospel affirmed by Marcion, they say : " If there be 
an allusion to any Gnostic doctrines at all, it is more probable 
that it is to the dualistic opposition between the principles of 
good and evil in the world, which was an Oriental element in 
the philosophy of some of the early Gnostics." 

To this age belongs Tatian, who first asserted a penal immor- 
tality, and who afterwards led the sect of Encratites. And not 
long after lived Tertullian, who embraced and defended Mon- 
tanism, an ascetic doctrine, " which, if it had generally prevailed, 

^ Isis and Osiris, cc, 45, 46, 2 Hippolytus and his Age, 2d ed. T. 127. 



36 



EVIL AND GOD. 



would either have destroyed the Church or the nature of man." ^ 
His character was " severe, gloomy, and fiery." ^ He was " a 
foe to speculation, yet could not resist the impulses of a pro- 
found speculative intellect." ^ The following expression of his 
views is pertinent to our present argument. The Divine Rea- 
son, he says, " composed the universe of diverse elements, that 
all things might subsist by the union of opposing principles ; of 
vacuum and matter, the animate and the inanimate, the compre- 
hensible and the incomprehensible, light and darkness, even life 
and death. The same Reason has also given Time an appointed 
and marked limitation, so that the first beginning thereof in 
which we live, should after a season come to an end ; while that 
which follows, and for which we wait, should continue into a 
boundless eternity. When the interval shall have expired, and 
the fashion of the world itself, which is also temporal, like a 
vestibule to that eternal scheme, — then the whole human race 
shall be raised up, to answer for the good or evil deeds of this 
life, and shall be consigned over to a vast and endless eter- 
nity. There will not then be successive deaths and resurrections, 
but we shall be the same persons as now, and no other there- 
after ; the worshippers of God, ever with God, clothed with a 
substance proper for endless duration ; but the corrupt and un- 
godly in a punishment of mountains of fire, that has in its own 
nature a divine ministration of immortality." * 

This passage is one of a class. It states evil as an eternal 
fact, with a philosophic necessity, but without a corresponding 
theology ; for the age of theodicy was not yet. In this state of 
things appeared Manes, a Persian of the Maguscean sect, who 
held an absolute Dualism, and with whom, in the changes of 
contending parties, he was now banished from the kingdom. 
The formation of his system is thus indicated by Hase : " Hav- 
ing discovered many points of agreement between the doctrines 
of Mithraism, of Buddhism, and of Gnostic Christianity, and 

1 Hase, Church Hist. §67. Compare Neander, Church Hist. I, 520 — 524, 
614, Torrey's trans. But Jeremy Taylor excuses Montanus as having enjoined 
abstinence, not for conscience' sake, but for discipline. — Liberty of Prophesy- 
ing, § 2. 

2 Hase, ibid, § 83. « Neander, ibid, p. 509. ■* Apol. c. 48 ; comp. c. 18. 



DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 



37 



the principles of his own paternal faith, he believed himself 
called to combine these popular religions, especially Parsism 
and Christianity, into one universal religion." ^ To this task he 
was already invited by the Dualism for which Christians were 
even now reproached by their heathen opponents. Celsus 
charged them with holding that " there is an execrable god, con- 
trary to the great God." ^ And Plotinus wrote a book against 
those Christians who asserted that this world was made by an 
evil god.^ The complaint of Athanasius, that " some heretics, 
forsaking the ecclesiastical doctrine, and making shipwreck of 
of the faith, have falsely attributed a real nature and essence 
to evil," * also indicates that this doctrine was troublesome to 
the churches. This is most manifest from the lively account 
we have of a debate, real or fictitious, supposed to have been 
held between Manes and Archelaus, and which betrays an 
intense interest, on the part of the audience, in the question 
whether the doctrine of an evil god was true, or was to pre- 
vail. 

One passage of this debate is most important, as showing that 
the eternity of evil was really the main question, and that the 
orthodox argument was apparently sustained, only when this 
dire eternity was given up. " If the human race should at 
length perish from the face of the earth, in such a way that they 
can sin no more, the substance of this evil tree, bearing no more 
fruit, would perish." " And when," asks Manes, " will that thing 
happen, that you tell of?" "I am only a man," replied Arche- 
laus, "and do not know what will come; nevertheless I shall 
not leave that point without saying something upon it." He 
afterwards says : " Therefore it [death] has an end, because it 
began in time ; and that is true which was spoken : ' Death is 
swallowed up in victory.' For it was not unbegotten, but is 
shown to have both beginning and end." Archelaus's doctrine 
of the End of Evil is, indeed, restorationist ; but the applause of 

1 Ease, Church Hist., § 82. 2 Qrigen, con. Cels. 1. 6, p. 303. 8 Ennead. ii. 1. 9. 
4 Contra Gentes. 0pp. I. 6, ed. Bened, 1698. 
4 



38 



EVIL AND GOD. 



the audience at the discomforture of Manes, when the dispute 
ends, is none the less significant." 

The history of the Manichagans is interesting for their crude 
opinions, their ascetic virtues and vices, and their sufferings. 
Persecuted, first as a Persian sect and then as Gnostic Chris- 
tians, they still flourished and made proselytes every where. 
Augustine was for nine years of their persuasion, and after em- 
bracing Christianity spared no pains to convince them of their 
error. They were the first to suffer death as heretics, though 
not without remonstrance from such men as Ambrose. Under 
various names, among which was the title of honi homines^ they 
survived until the eleventh century, when they were universally 
punished with death ; and thereafter as a lingering sect, prevail- 
ing in some districts, as late as A. D. 1442. ^ 

Shortly after the time of Manes, Dualism recovered its philo- 
sophic form, in the writings of Lactantius, " the Christian Cicero." 
He often speaks of evil as essential to the existence of good, by a 
law of contraries or a polarity of forces of which neither can sub- 
sist without the other. ^ Evil is necessary to illustrate the nature 
of good, and therefore is made part of the original plan of the 
world. ^ But even with Lactantius, who is most eloquent in the 
philosophic defence of the doctrine, it became in its development 
a personal Dualism. Christ and Satan are respectively the 
right hand and the left hand of God. And Satan is an anti- 
God, the rival of the true God. ^ The Manichsean character of 
his theology was however so manifest, that one most objectiona- 
ble passage was omitted from later manuscripts and earlier 

1 Eouth's Eeliqq. SacrjB, IV. 182, 183, 205, 280. Archelaus explains Matt, 
xiii. 13, and 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4, of evil men ceasing to be, by conversion; with the 
remark: "As some interpret, whose discourse is not to be disesteemed." 

2 Gieseler, Church Hist. Period I. § 61, Period III. § 46. The history of Mani- 
chasism is the subject of two bulky volumes, i>y Beausobre. 

3 De Ira Dei, c. 15. 

4 " Malum nihil aliud est quam boni interpretatio. Sublato igitur roalo, etiam 
bonum tolli necess est," — Inst. Div. 1. 7. c. 5. " Cur [Deus] ipsi daijiox uioxv^ 
a principio fecit, ut esset, qui cuncta corrumperet, cuncta disperderet? Dicara 
breviter, cur hunc talem esse voluerit." — Inst. Epitome, c. 29. 

5 Inst. Div. 1. 2, cc. 8, 9. 



DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 



39 



editions of his works, " probably to save his reputation. -"^ " It is 
admitted by Hase, with the remark that "his belief in a principle 
of evil appointed by God, and of equal rank with Christ, and in 
a millenial kingdom, may be regarded as a lingering shadow of 
the preceding century." ^ 

It is here worthy of notice that Hitter reckons Synesius as 
incontestably a Dualist. Besides his opinions already noted, he 
gives as reasons for this judgment the following: "The world 
appeared to him to be a harmony composed of diverse elements. 
There are two principles, one of light, the other of darkness 
striving to wrest from the divine law its authority. How often 
does he speak of matter as the second principle ! The material 
and the immaterial are coeternal. He denied the future destruc- 
tion of the world, and the resurrection, regarding the body as 
the source of evil." ^ 

The Lactantian form of Dualism appears in the writings of 
two eminent Mohammedans.^ Among the Schoolmen the prob- 

1 Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc. § 133. 

2 Church Hist. § 88. The editors of the Paris eel. 1748, admit the style of the 
passage to be that of Lactantius; but they say: "It teaches the error of the 
Manichasans," and " it is false, that good and evil are so connected that if you 
remove the one you destroy the other; for in heaven this does not obtain.''' 

3 Hist, of Chr. Phil. i. 2, c. 2, § 4. He refers to De Insomn. Pra;f. ; pp. 134, 
141, 142; De Provid. § 1, p. 89; Ep. 105, ed. Petav. 

4Pococke quotes from Abulfeda (A.D. 1360) the supposed declaration of 
Zoroaster, that " good and evil arose from the mingling of light and darkness, 
without which the world would never have been." And Tholuck from the 
deep-minded mystic, Dschelaleddin : 

" Never does the power of medicine appear, 
Without a poor sick one full of disease. 
Thus in the low is ever mirrored the high ; 
Thus want is ever the point whence fullness gleams forth. 
Ever by contrast is contrast revealed. 
Only by the sour is the sweetness of honey made known." 
And again : 

" If God appear in conflict with God, 

Believe — that in this way an Eden will bloom; 

Since in conflict and peace, God, the Unity, is, 

Whose self-conflict is uot injui-ious to self." 

Cited by Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sm, I. 398. Compare Tholuck's remark on the 
Shalmaganians in his Guido and Julius, p. 61. 



40 



EVIL AND GOD. 



lem of Evil was thus solved by Duns Scotus ; ^ and Aquinas 
was, perhaps, once perplexed to refute this philosophy ; if we 
may infer any thing from his exclaiming in a fit of abstraction, 
in the presence of the king, striking the table with his hand, 
that " the argument was now conclusive against the Manichag- 
ans."^ The devout mystic Jacob Bcehme is thought by some 
to derive evil by the same method.^ 

The fictitious character of poetry exempts it from theological 
censure until it becomes the expression of a theology. Such is 
the fact in the case of the two great epics of Christendom, — 
the " Divina Commedia " and the " Paradise Lost." In the 
former, the woes of lost men, however wicked or contemptible, 
honored with immortal song, would move the stones to pity. In 
the latter, fallen angels are " angels still ; " and the high rank 
and eternal power assigned to the Adversary justify the remark 
of one who says : " I have many times thought that it was owing 
•to the lofty and grandiose descriptions given in the Paradise 
Lost, that men, since the time when that poem came to be popu- 
lar, have invested Satan with a kind of attributes never before 
assigned to him ; and, as was natural to the increasing spirit- 
uality of religion, have more and more divested him of the 
notion of locality and form, till the Evil One of this age is 
become, in effect and conceit of men, the Evil Principle of the 
Magians." ^ 

Abp. King, in his work on the Origin of Evil, finds what we 
• may call a Dualism in the divine nature. He concludes thus: 
" From a competition, or, if we may allow the expression, a 
conflict of two infinities, i. e. Omnipotence and Goodness, evils 
necessarily arise. These attributes amicably conspire together, 
and yet restrain and limit each other. There is a kind of strug- 
gle and opposition between them, whereof the, evils in nature 
bear the shadow and resemblance. Here, then, and nowhere 
else, may we find the primary and most certain rule and origin 

1 De Divis. Natur. 1. 5, cc. 85, 36, 38. 2 Hampden, Schol. Phil. § 16. 

s Muller, dir. Doc. of Sin, I. 389. 4 y^igar Errors; Small Books on Great 
Subjects, No. VIII. See a recent argument to show that Satan is uncreated, 
by J. H. Noyes, The Berean.§ 14. 



DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 



41 



of evils, and here only must we look for that celebrated prin- 
ciple of the ancients, — 

Nci/cof ovXofievov kol firjpLg alfiaToeaaa.^ 
The Pestilential Strife and Bloody Figlit." 

The eternity of evil follows logically from this statement of 
the case, though it contains an element of truth which we hope 
to bring out in its place. Kindred to this is the very prevalent 
view, that the various attributes of God could not be known 
except by occasion of evil ; especially that His justice and His 
mercy would be veiled glories, if they were not displayed in the 
punishment or the pardon of guilty creatures. The key-note 
of this necessitous optimism was struck in the saying of one of 
the Fathers respecting the glory revealed in Christ : " Happy 
the sin which brought us such a Redeemer." 

Another form of the doctrine of God's necessities, touching 
the execution of His justice, is sometimes stated in so palpable 
a dualism, that the Manichgean notion would be almost a relief 
from it. Thus we have been told that " God was reduced to 
the unavoidable dilemma," of either contending with men for 
ever by threatenings and punishments here on the earth, or 
else destroying them utterly, so far as it respects this world, 
and removing the scene of their torments to a future state.^ 

Deferring for a moment a few modern dualistic passages, we 
should here consider the Manichsean relief from these difficul- 
ties that was offered by Bayle, at the beginning of the last 
century. His hypothesis was not only suited to his peculiar 
genius, his very acuteness causing him to waver between oppos- 
ing plausibilities, but it was adapted to the age in which he 
lived. The startling paradox was needed to expose the shal- 
lowness of many a dogmatic solution of the deepest and most 
fearful problem. He was indeed a sceptic, but in the ancient 

1 Empedocles. 

2 J. Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, 1. 1, § 6; compare 1.3, § 6. This 
work was the "most considerable publication" which appeared in reply to 
Hartley's " Observations on Man." 

4=* 



4:2 



EVIL AND GOD. 



and honorable sense of the term. Denying the fact of moral 
evil, he was properly a fatalist. But his general integrity is 
well attested.^ 

He regarded as " inexplicable and incomprehensible " the 
origin of any evil, more or less. But he inveighs most ear- 
nestly, not to say ably, against the derivation of eternal evil 
from any form of monotheism. Of the Calvinist, exalting the 
divine power, he demands why a Being, freely creating tiie 
materials of a universe for His own glory, must allow so much 
evil. Of the Arminian, extolling the divine goodness, he asks 
why ci'eated free agents must be ever miserable in spite of that 
goodness. Of the Origenist, who subjected the freely acting 
creature, and through him the Creator, to an eternal vicissitude 
of evil, he asks if an alone supreme God must permit even this. 
" See, then," he says, " how reason is compelled to acknowledge 
that two opposite causes, the one benign, the other malign, have 
determined the condition of created beings." " This is the way, 
the Manichffian v/ould conclude, that we exculpate the Good 
Principle ; He has been crossed by the Evil Principle. Who- 
ever has a companion, has a master." ^ 

Confessing the intrinsic absurdity of Manichseisra, and yet 
affirming that it was, as a hypothesis, preferable to any existing 
theology, Bayle found opponents on every side. Of the replies 
which were made to his argument, seven are here worthy of 
notice. Le Clerc, like Archelaus in debate with Manes, dis-. 
tinctly abandoned the defence of the eternity of evil, and for 
argument's sake assumed that all men might finally be saved ; 

1 "Pierre Bayle appears," says Tennemann, "not to have been so intimately 
convinced as Glanville, of the possibility of a ti-ue philosophy, although he 
contributed more to open a ^vay to the discovery of it, by his ingenious attacks 
on the Dogmatic Systems, and by showing that Scepticism can not be the 
ultimate end of Reason. This great scholar and honorable man possessed not 
so much a profound spirit of philosophic research, as a quick sagacity and 

critical judgment Ke was a fii-m and sincere friend of Truth, and 

succeeded in combating the prejudices, the errors, the follies, and especially the 
superstitions of intolerance, with the arms of reasoning, of erudition, and of a 
lively wit." Hist, of Phil. § 352. Compare Hase, Church Hist. §§ 307, 411. 

2 E^ponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part I. c, 77. 



DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 43 

adding in a way not designedly cool : " If such an one can silence 
the Manichsean, what could not they do who should reason 
infinitely better than the disciples of Origen?"^ But why, 
Bayle retorts, is the Origenist chosen for this argument ? How 
is the orthodox opinion served by opposing one false scheme to 
another ? Why not bring forward one of those who could rea- 
son infinitely better ? ^ 

The most famous reply was that of Leibnitz, which has ren- 
dered classic the name he gave it — "Theodicy." After the 
manner of Lactantius, he makes evil a condition of the highest 
good. " There are some disorders in the parts (of the universe) 
which marvelously heighten the beauty of the whole ; as certain 
discords, skilfully employed, render the harmony more exqui- 
site." ^ Yet he will not say that evil is either a divine object or 
a divine method. " Evil has come par concomitance. This is 
illustrated in our system ; for we have shown that the evil which 
God has permitted was not an object of His will as end or as 
means, but only as condition, since it must be enveloped in the 
best system." ^ And of an infinite number of possible systems 
conceived by the divine mind, Leibnitz regards the world as it is, 
of which evil is an essential part, to be the best. This view is 
the optimism with which it is so difficult, if not impossible, to 
reconcile the notion of guilt. 

Leibnitz's system was perhaps too ingenious. His earnestness 
has been doubted by able critics. These doubts, which were en- 
entertained by Des Maizeaux,Le Clerc,and Poiret, are supported 
by a letter of the chancellor Pfaff", a friend of Leibnitz, of whom 
he had inquired what he thought of his book. PfatF suggested 
that as Le Clerc had endeavored simply to silence the Manichasan 
by an assumed argument, so Leibnitz had attempted a plausible 
reply which should offend no party. Leibnitz answered : " You 
have hit the nail on the head. And I wonder that no one here- 
tofore has discovered my art. For it is not the part of philoso- 
phers to be ever in earnest ; for as you well suggest, they try 

1 Parrhasiana, I. 303. 

2 Eeponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part 11. c. 172. 

s Abrdg^ de la Controversie, c. 5. 4 Theodic^e, Part III. § 336. 



44 



EVIL AND GOD. 



their skill in making hypotheses. You, who are a theologian, 
will act the theologian in refuting errors." And the chancellor 
expresses his doubts whether Leibnitz did much respect the or- 
thodox theology Werdermann, discussing the question of 
Leibnitz's seriousness, claims for him the absence of dogmatism, 
and the benefit of the mental reservations : " with all respect to 
what is better," and " if any one understands more correctly." ^ 

The real opinion of Leibnitz respecting future punishment is 
not easily determined. The following passage indicates a doc- 
trine of purgatory : " The time of purgation," he says, is as 
long as the soul needs, to understand properly the evil of its 
original sin ; wherefore that pain consists in the vision of sin, 
evil, and the Devil, as the joy of heaven consists in the vision of 
God and of good." He held a theory of infinite guilt, of Avhich 
hereafter. He held that the heathen who die not in mortal sin 
are sent neither to heaven nor hell, but by the grace of Christ 
are changed from enemies to friends of God. " It is not Pela- 
gian to say that they escape hell by their own powers, but only 
to say that they gain heaven thus." ^ The remarkable essay of 
Lessing entitled : " Leibnitz on eternal punishments," ^ gives a 
view of the subject not unlike that of Swedenborg, which was 
perhaps Leibnitz's own. 

Second in fame of the replies to Bayle is that of "William 
King, Archbishop of Dublin. His views of eternal misery ap- 
pear in the following passage : " The matter is yet in debate 
whether it were better to be miserable than not to be at all, and 

1 Acta Eniditoram, 1728, pp. 126, 127. 

2 Theodicee, Theil III. § 39. We should state that Mr. Eymery, in his edition 
of Leibnitz's Systema Theologicura, Paris 1819, gives a letter of the author to 
Thomas Burnet explaining the occasion of his Theodicee, Avith the remark: 
" As 1 have meditated on this subject from my youth, I believe that I have dis- 
cussed it thoi'oughly; " and also a passage from a letter to Toland^ Tvhich says: 
" I examine all the difficulties of Bayle, and try to resolve them at the same 
time that I do justice to his merit." The reader must judge if the letters decide 
an}^ thing. 

3 Leibnitiana, Ixxix, Ixxxviii ; 0pp. VI. 310, 311. 

4 Occasioned by the discovery of his preface to Soner's " Demonstratio theol. 
et philos., quod seterna impiorum supplicia non arguunt Dei justitiam, sed 
mjustitiam." 



DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 



45 



there are arguments on both sides. It is manifest that . 
those evils which overbalance the desire and happiness of life put 
an end to life itself, and that such objects as are hurtful to the 
sense at length destroy it. The same seems to hold good in 
thinking substances, viz : these things which affect the mind to a 
higher degree than it is able to bear, may in like mariner put an 
end to it. For they may be supposed either to drive us to mad- 
ness, or so far disorder the thinking faculty as to make us think 
of nothing at all." He goes on to speak of the lost as, perhaps, 
in a kind of phrensy, being in fact miserable, yet refusing to give 
up the cause of their woe, being still wise in their own opinion, 
and as it were pleasing themselves in their misery." ^ 

The most elaborate reply was that of Crousaz. He was a 
statesman as well as a philosopher, and his work shows, along 
with high moral feeling, more of good sense than most replies, 
if we except his approval of Le Clerc's method. He insists 
much upon the utter unreasonableness and wickedness of the 
sinner, in preferring evil to infinite good. He says nothing of 
any use or advantage to accrue to the saints, from the woes of 
the lost. " God makes no account of them or of their evils." 
And their sufferings are not inflicted, but they consist mainly of 
self-reproach in view of their eternal loss. But he reduces the 
number of the lost far below the common estimate ; censuring 
as pitiless those doctors who reckon among them " an infinity 
of persons who would be such more by their misfortune than 
their fault ;" and, replying to Bayle's argument that Satan had a 
great victory in the deluge, he deems that the temporal evils 
and destructions of the antediluvians, and of the Hebrews who 
perished in the wilderness, are their punishment. They are not 
of Satan's host. ^ 

In the Boyle Lecture, allusion is made to Bayle by Dr. John 
Clarke. He leaves the way clear for those who think there is no 
immortality in the second death. ^ 

1 Origin of Evil, Appendix, § 2. 

2 Examen du Pyrrhonisme, 1733. pp. 553, 554, 558, 572, 574. 

3 To this place (Tophet) is that hell which is prepared for those degenerate 
sinners, who are beyond all means of conviction and reformation, compared.- 



46 



EVTL AND GOD. 



Returning to Bayle's own time, we find Jacquelot, who had 
been a Calvinist, pressed with the special difficulties of the fore- 
ordination of eternal evil, suspected of favoring Arminianism. 
He confesses that the thought of eternal punishments appals the 
imagination ; and that one is not only embarrassed, but frightened 
by it. He supposes the lost will be the cause of their own tor- 
ment, subsisting eternally deprived of the glory of the blessed.^ 

And of all who replied to Bayle. so far as w^e know, Jurieu, 
" the Goliath of the Protestants," alone stood firm ; and he stood 
up more than straight. His absolutist views are most boldly 
stated in his "Judgment of the rigid and the lax methods of 
explaining Providence and Grace." He says : " The idea of 
sovereign perfection excludes what are called velleities, — imper- 
fect volitions, which are expressed by an : 'I would.' . . . 
I should put creatures in a sovereign dependence on God. But, 
it is said, you thus put the creature in a state of great imperfec- 
tion. I confess it. But the idea of the infinitely perfect Being 
obliges me to make a sacrifice of all creatures." As shadow 
depends upon substance, so the creature upon God. " It is He 
who made Absalom lay with his father's concubines. . . . 
He commanded Shimei to curse David." "Man is only an 
instrument in His hands." " God is the only being properly so 
called. . . . God has over His creatures a power without 
bounds, and unlimited right, to make of them whatever seems to 
Him good. ... If God had not permitted sin, He v/ould 
have manifested neither the infinite hatred which He has for sin, 
nor His justice, nor His mercy. There would have been in the 
world neither laws, nor penalties, nor rewards, nor Paradise, 
nor Hell. And it is certain that these things enter into the idea 
of a perfect world, which should contribute most to the glory of 

Which, as it agrees in other circumstances, so does it likewise in this, that 
it will be eternal. "Which word we find used in Scriptiire in various senses, 
but especially in these two ; either to signify the whole duration of the ex- 
istence of any being or thing, in any particular state ; or else to signify the 
whole state itself, in which that person or thing exists. Each of which may 
be applied to that punishment which is threatened to the wicked in a future 
state." — Cause and Origin of Moral Evil, Boyle Lecture Sermons, III. 274 
1 Conformity de la RaLsou avec la Foi, pp. 205, 215, 220. 



DUALISM. ITS HISTORY. 



47 



its Author." By an argument which would make God the 
creator of nothing, Jurieu exculpates Him from the guilt of sin. 
" Since God has an infinite hatred for sin, and sin is not properly 
a being, but a nothing and a privation of being, God can not be 
the author of it, nor commit it." (§§ 3, 4, 13, 15). 

Such were the methods of argument against Bayle. The 
doctrine of the final destruction of the wicked, which Clarke 
allowed with a perhaps, and which then bore the name of So- 
cinianisra, Bayle treats with his usual objections. Yet he says : 
"Annihilation is of all kinds of punishment that which seems 
most in accordance with the ideas of the w^isdom of God. They 
give reasons for it which M. Jacquelot leaves without reply." ^ 

The remark of Buddeus, a learned and able writer, conclud- 
ing an account of the controversy, is significant. He says : " No 
one can deny that the very great difficulties which press the 
doctrine of the origin of evil and its reconciliation with the jus- 
tice and goodness of God, could be more easily overcome if an 
end of hell-punishments is supposed, and not their eternity." ^ 
To which we may here add the later expression of Miiller : " A 
purely theoretic solution of the problem of the world were possi- 
ble, if the evil were not; — the evil, which does not resolve itself 
as a passing moment in the process of the development of the 
world, but is capable of being maintained, by the will of the per- 
sonal creature persistently hardening itself, through endless 
ages." ^ 

"We are well aware that the history and inherent diflficulties 
of a bald Manicha3ism make it apparently unworthy of notice at 
this day. We are told that "the world is not likely to see a 
revival of it." ^ But history has given at least a very large suf- 
frage in its favor ; and its difficulties as a theodicy, in which 
most important view it is the strongest, may yet be preferred 
when the difficulties of other systems are more deeply felt. 

1 Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste, Part 11. c. 34 ; comp. Hist, and Crit, 
Diet., Origen, B. 

2 Inst. Theol. Dogm. 1. 2, c. 3, § 17 ; comp. 1. 3, c. 2, § 35. 

3 Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 489, Conclusion. 

4 Thompson, Christian Theism, p. 298. 



48 



EVIL AND GOD. 



These difficulties are even now pressing multitudes of the most 
thoughtful divines to Origenism. This well known tendency of 
Tholuck arises, we are told, " from peculiar objections which he 
has, in common with his evangelical countrymen, against a per- 
petual division, dissension (Zwiespalt) in the moral universe." ^ 
And Olshausen, speaking of the unprecedented extent of Uni- 
vcrsalism, says : "Although this may often be owing to a sickly 
and torpid state of the moral feelings, yet it is without doubt 
deeply rooted in noble minds ; it is the longing of the soul after 
complete harmony in the universe." ^ 

The reaction now is from an apparent Dualism to the error 
just named. But when this way of escape is cut off by appeal 
to the Scriptures, we know not how easily the tide may set the 
other way, and the philosophic become a personal Dualism, in 
the exaltation of the power of Satan or some other evil agency. 
We are advised by a most profound writer, in allusion to the 
speculations of a past age, that " the theological and philosophical 
character of the present time can only furnish us with a poor 
guarantee that perhaps the inclination to a dualistic consideration 
of the world will not extend itself in a similar manner as a few 
decennaries ago." ^ The more subtle and bold speculation, which 
inquires into the mode of divine existence, along with not a little 
Pantheism, has even now carried the philosophic Dualism to its 
utmost limit, and the world must subsist by contrasts.^ As if the 
Fall had made men subtle and ingenious, they are too fond of 
weaving evil and good as warp and woof for the intricate texture 
of the universe. Religious and devout men allow expressions 
that can mean scarcely less. Thus a late writer, opposing the 
doctrine of the extinction of the wicked, says: "An 'eternal 
redemption' we regard as involving an equally eternal enslave- 
ment. Heaven is only heaven while there exists a hell ! " ^ In 

1 German Selections, by EdTvards and Park, p. 215. For the actual opinion 
of Tholuck, see " Earnest Appeal to the Am. Tract Soc," pp. 48-50. 
- Coram, on Matt. xii. 31, 32. 
'■ Wiiller, Chr. Doc. of Sm, I. 441. 

4 See Miiller's remarks on Blasche, and also on Schleiermacher, Schelling, 
Hegel, and Daub, 
s H. W. Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, p. 503. 



i 

j DUALISM. — ITS HISTORY. 49 

! 

i a most able recent critique upon the same doctrine, the Lactan- 
tian argument of the economy and eternity of evil largely enters.^ 
The Lactantian result — 

" Evil and good are God's right hand and left," 

graces the introduction of a very popular epic, which, however, 
confers on all the instruments of evil the final blessedness which 
they subserve.^ The French philosopher whose " Modern Sys- 
tems of Theodicy" has received the prize of the Academy of 
Moral and Political Sciences, appears to optimize in the style of 
Leibnitz, making evil " not absolute, since it contributes to the 
order of the universe." ^ In one form of reaction from such an 
economy of evil, sin appears as having gained a victory over God, 
existing with no manner of permission from Him."* In some 
* parts of our own country a doctrine of " Two Seeds," not unlike 
the Persian notion of " two souls," related by Xenophon, and 
very similar to the Manichaean derivation of the human race, 
— is even now extensively prevalent, s And a very popular, 
because very eloquent, style of theology, aggrandizes the power 
of evil thus : — 

^•The power of an endless death! Amazing and infinitely 
dreadful expression! Yet thus hath eternal life its infinite 
and opposite extreme. . . . Death ! Its shadow covers 
the world, darkens it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears 
and forebodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death, 
men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, but its 
substance and its power are the power of an endless life, 
life in death, and death in life, confiicting for ever. 
There is a tremendous emphasis in the declaration that sin, 
when it is finished, bringeth forth death. "When sin is finished, 
the whole being is alive with it, in a living, positive, active 
death, perfect, unmingled, unalleviated. It is absolute evil, 
unbalanced, unmodified, unmitigated. Perfection in sin is the 

IT. M. Post, New Englander, Feb., 1856, pp. 122-131. 

2 Bailey's Festus: 

3 Saisset, Th^odic^e, Manuel de Philosophie, p. 494. His Prize Essay is not 
yet published. 4 gee below, c. 4, § 3. 5 See J. H. Hoyes, The Berean. 

5 



50 



EVIL AND GOD. 



negation of all good, and the active despotism of all evil. Neither 
of these can be without the other. ... As the happiness of 
heaven consists in the knowledge of good, so the misery of hell 
consists in the knowledge of evil. In both directions the measure 
is infinite. Approximation towards God, in his knowledge, 
likeness and love, is the rule in heaven ; distance from Him, 
and enmity against Him, is the rule in hell. And there is no 
half-way, but a perfection in both extremes. . . . There 
are tremendous images. The shock of furious armies, the crash 
of falling avalanches, mountains overwhelming cities, volcanoes 
in action, herds of wild beasts confined and roaring in the dun- 
geons of the Coliseum, making the whole structure quake with 
their bellowing?, then all at once let loose, and with a fierce 
conflict of hunger and rage grappling w^ith one another; the 
elements in wild affright and uproar; earthquakes, conflagra- 
tions, floods, pestilences, wars; — all these are dire images of 
terror, ruin, desolation, destruction. But all these, and even the 
stars dropping from heaven, as when a fig-tree casteth her un- 
timely figs, and the whole universe beaten together in chaos, or 
shriveling as a parched scroll, — all these come short of any 
representation of an eternal death ; they all fail, they are mere 
transitory syllables. The moral death is unapproachable by 
any such representation." ^ 

What more than this could the Adversary do or desire, if he 
were a God? 

§ 9. THE REACTION. — AGONY OF FAITH. 

The acquired sense of the term " Manichasan," as denoting an 
inherent corruption of matter and the propriety of an ascetic 
life, is significant of the moral result of Dualism. It carries the 
conflict of the universe into the bosom of every man who would 
be saved, and makes the struggle between the flesh and the 
spirit an internecine warfare, in which the body is no longer 
regarded as a wayward servant, to be first subdued and then 
cherished, until it shall give place to a better ; but as a natural 

1 G. B. Cheever, Powers of the World to Come, pp. 258, sq. 



DUALISM. THE REACTION. 



51 



enemy, under whose tyranny we are born, and from whom we 
must escape as best we may. The history of this form of Dual- 
ism would be not only the external history of asceticism, but 
the account of a thousand questionings,' misgiving, and doubts, 
respecting the empire of God and the reason of this terrible 
necessity imposed upon the children of His kingdom. 

We have noted a probable connection between the ascetic life, 
and the notion of a penal immortality, in the case of Tatian. 
And in our first chapter we have observed some trying results 
of the notion of an absolute immortality. We may now note a 
few instances of burdened and agonized faith, among those who 
accept the doctrine of eternal evil, regarding it as no part of 
God's plan, and from v/hose theology we have deduced the prin- 
ciple of Dualism. 

Our first example contains, if we mistake not, the very princi- 
ple of asceticism ; the sentiment, at least, would be so applied, 
in the monastery. " If," says Moses Stuart, parents, husbands, 
wives, brothers, sisters, must see those dear as their own life 
perish at last, while they themselves are saved, heaven in mercy 
will either extinguish their social susceptibilities, or else give 
them such a sweet and overpowering sense of the justice and 
goodness of God, as shall not permit the joys of the blessed to 
be marred, nor the songs of the redeemed to be interrupted with 
sighs of sympathetic sorrow. How this will or can be done, we 
may never know in the present world ; nay, we may have many 
a distressing hour, while inquiring how it can be done, unless 
our very nature itself is wholly changed." ^ 

Another example is found in a late discussion of the Arminian 
scheme. To the objection that God "is liable to be defeated in 
all His designs, and to be as miserable as He is benevolent," 
and that " this is infinitely the gloomiest idea that was ever 
thrown upon the world ; it is gloomier than hell itself ;"^ it is 
replied : " True, there might be a gloomier spectacle in the 
universe than hell itself ; and for this very reason it is, as we 



1 Bib. Eepositorr, July, 1840, pp. 34, 35. 

2 Old and New Theology, p. 38. 



52 



EVIL AND GOD. 



have seen, that God has ordained hell itself, that such gloomier 
spectacle may never appear in the universe to darken its tran- 
scendent and eternal glories. It is on this principle that Ave 
reconcile the goodness of God with the awful spectacle of a 
world lying in ruins, and with the still more awful spectacle of 
an eternal hell beyond the grave." Again: "We need not 
frighten ourselves with ' gloomy ideas.' There are gloomy facts 
enough in the universe to call forth all our fears. Indeed, if 
we should permit our minds to be directed, not by the reality of 
things, but by the relative gloominess of ideas, we should alto- 
gether deny the eternity of future torments, and rejoice in the 
contemplation of the bright prospects of the universal holiness 
and happiness of created beings." ^ 

The experience of John Foster has been very aptly employed 
in the arguments of the " Conflict of Ages." We shall cite his 
language with some reluctance, on account of a prevalent notion 
that he was of a gloomy temper. If this were true, it should be 
considered that he might well be glocyny, whether himself per- 
suaded, or surrounded by fellow creatures who were persuaded, 
that sin and woe must be eternal. But Foster, though pensive 
as men of genius are wont to be, was not gloomy ; he was, in 
society and in his familiar letters, cheerful; and the growing 
appreciation of this fact will, we think, give full value to his 
sentiments on the problem of Evil. 

Writing to Dr. Harris on receipt of a copy of his " Great 
Commission," he says : " I hope, indeed may assume, that you 
are a man of cheerful temperament ; but are you not sometimes 
invaded by the darkest visions and reflections while casting your 
view over the scene of human existence, from the beginning to 
this hour? To me it appears a most mysterious and awful 
economy, overspread by a lurid and dreadful shade. I pray 
for the piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and 
feeling to the wise and righteous Disposer of all existence. . . . 
And it would be a transcendently direful [contemplation] if I 
believed the doctrine of the eternity of future misery. It amazes 

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, pp. 216, 217. 



I 

DUALISM. THE REACTION. 53 

me to imagine how thoughtful and benevolent men, believing 
that doctrine, can endure the sight of the present world and the 
history of the past. . . I am, without pretending to any extra- 
ordinary depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they do 
with their sensibility, and in what manner they maintain a firm 
assurance of the Divine goodness and justice." And in another 
letter, he says : " Under the light (or the darkness) of this doc- 
trine, how inconceivably mysterious and awful is the whole econ- 
omy of this human world ! The immensely greater number of 
the race hitherto, through all ages and regions, passing a short 
life under no illuminating, transforming influence of their Crea- 
tor ; ninety-nine in a hundred of them, perhaps, having never 
even received any authenticated message from Heaven ; passing 
off the Avorld in a state unfit for a spiritual, heavenly and happy 
kingdom elsewhere ; and all destined to everlasting misery. 
The thoughtful spirit has a question silently suggested to it of 
a far more emphatic import than that of him who exclaimed. 
* Hast thou made all men in vain ? ' " ^ 

The experience of the author of the " Conflict of Ages " is 
most fully stated under the view of God as sovereign, but ma- 
levolent, and more aptly illustrates another part of our argu- 
ment. But the following expressions may be cited here. He 
says : " For a time the system of this world rose before my 
mind, in the same manner, as far I can judge, as it did before 
the minds of Channing and Foster. I can, therefore, more 
fully appreciate their expression of their trials and emotions. 
But I was entirely unable to find relief as they did. The de- 
pravity of man, neither Christian experience, the Bible, nor 
history, would permit me to deny. Nor did reason or vScripture 
afford me any satisfactory grounds whatever for anticipating the 

• 1 Life and Corresp,, Let. 226, Sept. 1841. In this letter, Foster speaks of tlie 
scriptural ai'gnment in support of the common view as "formidably strong,'" 
but confesses slight acquaintance with the " literal intei-pretation of the threat- 
ened destruction" of the wicked. The person whose difficulties were the 
occcasion of the letter (Rev. Edward White) has subsequently published an 
able defence of this view, in his " Life in Christ." 
5* 



54 



EVIL AND GOD. 



restoration of the lost to holiness in a future state. Hence, for 
a time, all was dark as night." ^ 

One other instance of anguished faith will be specially appo- 
site, as the subject of it is known not to cherish any of the 
doubts, or to accept any of the theories, of the persons hereto- 
fore named. He does not tell us what would he his feelings if 
believed thus, nor of any escape from past conflict. Of 
marked strength and symmetry of character as a man and as a 
Christian divine, he stands as erect as the most implicit faith 
will sustain him, under the fairest pressure of the burden. 
And he says : 

" That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its 
infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it 
away from God, and virtue, and heaven; that any should 
suffer for ever, — lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling 
amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation, 
and without end ; that since God can save men, and will save a 
part, he has not purposed to save all ; that, on the supposition 
that the atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can 
cleanse from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all ; 
that, in a word, a God who claims to be worthy of the confidence 
of the universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should 
make such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers ; and 
that when an atonement had been made. He did not save all 
the race, and put an end to sin and woe for ever ; — 

"These, and kindred difficulties, meet the mind when we 
think on this great subject ; and they meet us when we endeavor 
to urge our fellow sinners to be reconciled to God, and to put 
confidence in Him. On this ground they hesitate. These are 
real, not imaginary difficulties. They are probably felt by every 
mind that has ever reflected on the subject ; and they are unex- 
plained, unmitigated, unremoved. I confess, for one, that I feel 
them, and feel them more sensibly and powerfully the more I 
look at them, and the longer I live. I do not understand these 
facts ; and I make no advances towards understanding them. I 



1 p. 189. 



I 



DUALISM. — THE REACTION. 



55 



do not know that I have a ray of light on this subject, which I 
had not when the subject first flashed across my soul. I have 
read, to some extent, what wise and good men have written. I 
have looked at their theories and explanations. I have endeav- 
ored to weigh their arguments ; for my whole soul pants for 
light and relief on these questions. But I get neither ; and in 
the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see 
no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the rea- 
son why sin came into the world ; why the earth is strewed with 
the dying and the dead ; and why man must suffer to all eter- 
nity. 

"I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these sub- 
jects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind ; nor 
have I an explanation to offer, or a thought to suggest, that 
would be of relief to you. I trust other men — as they profess 
to do — understand this better than I do, and that they have 
not the anguish of spirit which I have ; but I confess, when I 
look on a world of sinners and of sufferers ; upon death-beds 
and grave-yards ; upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to 
suffer for ever ; when I see my friends, my parents, my family, 
my people, my fellow citizens ; when I look upon a whole race, 
all involved in this sin and danger, and when I see the great 
mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when 1 feel that God 
only can save them, and yet He does not do it,^ — I am struck 
dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I can not dis- 
guise it." ^ 

It is a sublime spectacle — that of such a man, and many 
such men, thus burdened, and yet confident in God that the 
light of another world will dispel the gloom, if it does not trans- 
mute the burden into a joy. The infinity may dwindle into 
insignificance, in that ever brightening day. "The Deity is 
■infinitely greater than all duration, as He is infinitely greater 
than time." Why not trustfully submit infinite problems, for 
His solution ? We admire the faith that conceives of Him as 
so surpassingly infinite and glorious, that eternal Evil become? 



1 Albert Barnes, Practical Sermons, pp. 123-125. 



56 



EVIL AND GOD. 



a mote, like the spots upon the sun, invisible in His superlative 
brightness. 

We cannot, however, admire the faith, if it seeks the infinite 
problem, like the knight-errant in quest of adventures ; for it 
then becomes romantic. Much less, if it would impose the doc- 
trine of eternal Evil, as a term of Christian faith, upon other 
minds ; it then becomes arrogant and despotic. And we tremble, 
as we gaze upon the lofty flight even of the sincere and earnest 
faith. The strong wing falters. The fervor is succeeded by 
the chill; the ecstasy subsides into pain. The faith is not joy- 
ous ; many will ask if it is normal and healthy. Many more 
will ask if the burden must be borne ; if the Evil is indeed to 
be eternal ; and if so, is it real ? 

W e may here cite the words of a deservedly popular writer, 
as justifying the doubts of one person already named, and sug- 
gesting a fact less known respecting another person. " If John 
Foster, or any man, deliberately and honestly conceive it irrec- 
oncilable with infinite love that God should condemn the 
wicked to everlasting punishment, we see not how he can 
accept the fact without blasphemy. If a man's reason, gazing 
earnestly and reverently with lively consciousness of its own 
faint and glimmering vision, and full thought of the compass 
and weight of infinite love guiding infinite power, is yet unable, 
we say not to justify, but to believe in the possible justice of 
eternal torments, we see not how he can accept the doctrine. It 
is not lawful for any man, taking the sentence, ' God is love,' to 
use it as a fiery rod, though it were of celestial gold, wherewith 
to sear the eyeballs of his reason. One man, considering long, 

1 " The real, though often unavowed, ground of the doubts which are thus 
overclouding the spirits of so many of the nominal disciples of Christ, is the 
hopeless dejection with which they contemplate that part of the Christian 
scheme which is supposed to consign the vast majority of our race to a future 
state, in which woe, indescribable in amount, is also eternal in duration. From 
this doctrine the hearts of most men turn aside, not only with an instinctive 
horror, but with an invincible increduhty; and of those who believe that it 
really proceeded from the lips of Christ himself, many are sorely tempted by it 
either to doubt the divine authority of His words, or to destroy their meaning 
by conjectural evasions of their force." — Sh' James Stephen, Essays in EccL 
Biog., II. 495, Epilogue. 



ABSOLUTISM. 



57 



and searching Scripture, can, with no outrage on his moral 
being, embrace in one view the courts of eternal joy and the 
prison of eternal darkness, and believe unconstrainedly that 
the King who sits over both is love ; such an one, we believe, 
was Jonathan Edwards. But another man can not do so ; and 
if he is as honest and reverent as the last, who is there on earth 
that can accuse him ? " ^ 

Jonathan Edwards doubtless "believed unconstrainedly " as 
a divine ; as almost any one may do in the way of speculation, 
saying that the Judge of all the earth will certainly do right, 
even if some of His creatures should suffer for ever. But as a 
man, Edwards suffered intensely, under the burden of his faith ; 
often walking his room for hours together with tears of grief, 
in view of the supposed destiny that awaited his fellow men yet 
out of Christ.^ 

§ 10. ABSOLUTISM. 

In this theology, evil is regarded as a part of the divine 
plan. Sin is opposed to God's command ; but, as a means to 
an end, it accords with God's desire. Behind His revealed will, 
there is a secret will designing and procuring the commission of 
that which He forbids, but which is supposed needful for the 
welfare of His creatures, or for display of His glory. His 
sovereignty is not only exalted above all ; it is extended to all 
things — even to the acts of men that seem to oppose it. 

In support of this view, justly styled "that horrible theory 
which asserts the double will of God," various passages of 
Scripture which assert God's permission and control of evil, 
are adduced as though they taught his complicity with it. 
" Shall there be evil in the city, and Jehovah hath not done it ? " 

• 1 Bajme, Christian Life, p. 336. 

2 We have this statement from a reliable source, though we have not a refer- 
ence to the original authority for it. It is supported by the following resolution 
in Edwards' journal, June 11, 1725 : " To set apart days of meditation on par- 
ticular subjects; as, a day for the consideration of the greatness of my sins; 
another to consider the dreadfulness and certainty of the futui'e miserj' of 
ungodly men," etc. Miller's Life, Sparks' Am. Biog. VIIL 47. 



58 



EVIL AND GOD. 



" I form the light, and create darkness ; I make peace, and create 
evil ; I, Jehovah, do all these things." " Jehovah hath made 
all things for Himself ; yea, even the wicked for the day of 
evil." " The Scripture saith of Pharaoh, Even for this same 
purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show toy power in 
thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the 
earth. Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, 
and whom He will He hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto 
me, Why doth He yet find fault ? for who hath resisted His 
will ? " " He worketh all things after the counsel of His own 
will." Such expressions of a language not the most flexible, 
designed to inspire confidence in Jehovah's power, and some of 
them designed expressly to meet a dualistic or polytheistic ten- 
dency, — are taken as accurate exponents of a theological sys- 
tem. Sin is no longer the mystery, for it is God's work ; the diffi- 
culty is shifted from its origin to the justice of its punishment. 

For the external history of this doctrine, which makes Might 
the fountain of Right, we naturally look to the old empires in 
which a despotic will was law. A decree issued by the king 
of Babylon was presumed to be just, because it was backed 
with power. And for the same reason, perhaps, the laws of 
the Medes and Persians were assumed to be infallible, and 
made changeless. By some Greek philosophers the true idea 
of right was timidly asserted ; but so little was it understood at 
Rome, that her governor of a Judiean province, hearing from 
the Saviour of men respecting his own righteous kingdom, 
could ask in sheer ignorance of his meaning, "What 's Truth?" 

The notion of Power was thus deified. What man might do 
in a subordinate sphere, God might do in the most absolute man- 
ner. The perversion was complete, when secular and spiritual 
power were combined in the head of a corrupt Church, who 
might, in the name of God, oppose and exalt himself above all 
that is called God, or that is worshipped. The corruption of 
theology was an inevitable result. We need not trace this in 
its early stages ; but in the time of Abelard we find it boldly 
asserted : " God commits no injustice towards His creature, in 
whatever way He treats him, whether he assigns him to 



ABSOLUTISM. 



59 



punisiiment or to life. ... In whatever way God may 
wish to treat His creature, He can be accused of no injustice ; 
nor can any thing be called evil in any way, if it is done accord- 
ing to His will. Nor can we, in any other way, distinguish 
good from evil, except by noticing what is agreeable to His will. 
Wherefore even those things which in themselves appear most 
improper and therefore blameworthy, no one can censure when 
they are done by command of the Lord." ^ The same doctrine 
is more explicitly taught by Ockham : " There is no act evil but 
as it is prohibited by God, and which can not be made good 
if commanded by God. ... If God had commanded 
His creatures to hate Himself, the hatred of God would ever be 
the duty of man." ^ Of this deplorable theology we see traces 
in the assertion of the great Reformer, that " it is the highest 
degree of faith to believe that He is merciful who saves so few 
and reprobates so many ; to believe Him just who of His own 
will makes us necessarily damnable ; so that He should seem, as 
Erasmus says, to delight in the torments of the lost, and more 
worthy to be hated than to be loved." Which Luther endeavors 
to justify by saying : " If you are pleased when God crowns the 
undeserving, you ought not to be displeased though He should 
damn those who deserve it not."^ The Jansenists, opposing the 
errors of the Jesuits, and affirming the irresistible grace of God, 
were condemned partly on the charge of similar views of God's 
power. And, without citing further examples here, it may be 
safely said that a proneness to justify the divine acts simply in 
the divine sovereignty, still remains as an extreme opinion in 
the church of Christ. 

That the Jesuits should oppose this view accords well with 
their doctrine of the human free-will, but not so clearly with 

1 Abelard, Comm. in Ep. ad Eom., 1. 2. 0pp. p. 595, Paris, 1616. 

2 See Mackintosli, Progress of Eth. Phil. § "3, where Gerson is cited to the 
same purpose. Compare Eutherford, cited by Leibnitz, Theodicee, 176, 178 ; 
Beza and Jm-ieu as cited by Bossuet, Variations, b. 2, c. 17 ; b. 14, cc. 1-4, and 
by Moehler, Symbolism, c. 3, § 16; — other like opinions, especially that of 
Hobbes, cited by Cudworth, Immutable Morality, b. 1, c. 1 ; — Paley, Mor 
Phil. b. 2, c. 3. 

3 De Servo Arbitrio, 0pp. II. foL 434, sq., ed. Wittemb. 1562. 



60 



EVIL AND GOD. 



their characteristic doctrine that the end sanctifies the means, 
and may transmute evil into good. The paradox is perhaps ex 
plained by the fact that the Augustinians have ever exalted the 
divine will and authority; the Jesuits, the human will and 
authority. The former have often gone too far ; yet in reducing 
all men to littleness before God, they have found a basis of 
human equality and civil liberty. The latter have put man in 
the place of God, in the papal prerogative. The dispute was in 
fact respecting the higher and the lower law ; the rights of con- 
science can be opposed only by the vox populi, vox Dei, which 
matures in the one-man power, and the common subversion of 
morality and liberty. 

The doctrine of the despot is the most frequent example of 
Absolutism. The same view is prevalent among the defenders 
of slavery. Thus it has been lately said : " I am ready to deny 
the great doctrine of eternal right and wrong. My ^eternal 
right ' is eternal conformity to what God says ; and my * eternal 
wrong ' is non-conformity. But I deny, absolutely, that there is 
an eternal right and wrong in the nature of things. This doc- 
trine is atheism."^ 

We have spoken of Absolutism as a relief sought from the 
burden of Duahsm. The reason is obvious ; it is hard to think 
of God as pressed by necessity ; very hard indeed, if the neces- 
sity is to be eternal. May He not make a virtue of it ? May 
it not be His choice ? May not the Adversary be a desirable 
servant of the Divine Majesty ? The philosophic form of Du- 
alism, as stated by Lactantius, was scarcely less than this. And 
even the Manichseans sometimes regarded the temptation and 
the transgression of our first parents as legitimate steps of hu- 
man progress, well pleasing to God.^ The same view, which 
seems to make vice the school of virtue, and sin the lesson of 
holiness, appears in conjjunction with the denial of man's free 
will, in various inquiries into the origin of evil.^ It is carried 

1 Dr. F. A. Ross, Speech in Presb. Gen. Assembly, May, 1857. 

2 Titus of Bostra, Contra Manich. 1. 3, cited by Eitter, Chr Phil. Part I, . 
c. 2, ^ 3. 

8 S. J-^nyns, Origin of Evil; — Villaume, Ursprung and Absichte des Uebels, 



ABSOLUTISar. — THE REACTION. 



61 



to a consistent result, we think, when the eternal suffering of the 
lost is sought to be justified as contributing to the eternal happi- 
ness of the saved. 

§11. THE REACTION. PROSTITUTION AND PROSTRATION OF 

FAITH. 

The strong expression cited from Luther, may be taken as an 
instance of the Prostitution of Faith ; but in his case formal and 
not real, vindicating as he did the distinctions of right and wrong 
against the indulgences and other corruptions of his age. The 
sovereignty which he strove to affirm, was that of God's grace 
and power against man's claim and arbitrament. The corrup- 
tion of faith was more real in the views of those whom he op- 
posed. But the corruption is repeated whenever power is adored 
for no other reason than because it is power, — the very vice 
which Zoroaster censured in the worshippers of Ahriman. 
" Faith without reason," says Dr. Arnold, " is not properly faith, 
but mere power worship ; and power worship may be devil wor- 
ship ; for it is reason which entertains the idea of God, — an idea 
essentially made up of truth and goodness, no less than of power." ^ 

To accept the doctrine of reprobation to eternal suffering, as 
an awful mystery, is one thing. To think one has solved the 
mystery and reconciled it with the divine goodness, is a very 
different thing. Here is the danger to man's faith. When the 
endless v/oe of myriads is apprehended as good for the universe, 
the moral sense may suffer in two ways : 1st, by a palsying of 
the sensibilities, — a well-being largely diluted with evil, being 
taken as the highest good ; 2d, by an ethical perversion, — evil 
being taken as the proper means of the highest good. One may 

— Lovett, Cause of Evil ; — T. S. Smith, Illustrations of the Div. Gov. This view 
is carried to its last result by Blasche (Ueber das Uebel), who regards Evil a? 
'in unison with the plan of the world, in such a way that it becomes the condition 
of all reality, and the stepping stone of all that is good. Thus, says Jliiller, 
" the full from God is in truth more powerful than God himself, and the theory 
threatens not so much to run out into Pantheism or Dualism, as much rather 
into Pansatanism." Chr. Doc. of Sin, I, 400. Compare Hagenbach, Hist, of 
Doc. 293, 295. The view given by Dr. N. Strong ( Doctrine of Eternal Misery, 
pp. 169-176) that the Fall was needful for man's instruction, and that the lie 
of Satan contained important truth, is only too similar to the above. 
1 The Christian Life, Note H. 
6 



o2 



EVIL AND GOD. 



put evil for good, or he may do evil that good may come. In 
either case our faith in God and our love to man will be corrupted. 
"When," says Watts, "I hear men talk of the doctrine of 
reprobation with a special gust and relish, as a favorite article, I 
can not but suspect their good temper, and question whether they 
love their neighbors as themselves." ^ But by the quality of our 
love to man will the nature of our theology and of our worship 
be largely determined. 

The Prostitution of Faith is incident either to the possession 
of power, or to the enjoyment of its favors. And it is confined 
to no species of power, secular or spiritual. The king, who " can 
do no wrong," and the courtier v/ho can do no wrong in his be- 
half, the oppressor and the extortioner, rejoicing in the fruit of 
other's toil, the Jesuit of whatever name, "lying for God," 
and the persecutor, who " thinks he is doing God service," the 
deluded man who deems himself "elect" and a favorite of 
Heaven, while he is careless of other's salvation, — are all ex- 
amples of this corrupted faith. And they are so numerous, and 
so closely allied to some pretence of religion, that it has become 
a proverb that no monstrous wrong was ever committed but it 
was " for the glory of God." 

The victim of abused power, on the other hand, can hardly 
know what faith is. To him, there is no " open vision," no mani- 
fest Providence. He knows no divine Goodness or Justice, if 
the evils he endures are to be unredressed. He may conceive a 
future retribution in which the tyrant and the slave shall change 
places ; but the morbid, vengeful feeling would not be faith. 
Tell him of an eternity, in which men of the most opposite con- 
ditions in this life, may in various degrees suffer together, and 
that will not give him faith. As for himself, he feels sure that 
his present sufferings cannot be the beginning of endless pains. 

1 Ruin and Recoveiy of Mankind, q, 13, § G. Compare Dwight, Theology, 
Serm. 167. Calvin himself, speaking of the Fall of Adam as involving so many 
nations with their infant children in eternal death, allows the expression: "A 
horrible decree, I confess " (decretum quidem horrible, fateor. Instit. 1, 3, c. 
23, §7; comp. Twisse below, p. 67). He can only say that "such was the 
will of God," and thinks those who are "so loquacious on every other point 
must here be struck dumb." 



PANTHEISM. THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. 



63 



Persuade him thus, and however good you may say that God is, 
your theology will be to him a divine Despotism, and his faith is 
prostrate. 

We need hardly say that all prayer offered to God under a 
mere persuasion of infinite danger, might with equal propriety, 
often with the same feelings, be offered to a God of absolute 
power, but of no recognized goodness or justice. 

§ 12. PANTHEISM. THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. , 

Better no God, than an evil God. Hence every theology 
which imposes evil as an eternal necessity, or introduces it as a 
divine plan, tends to the denial of the moral quality of sin, and 
of a personal Divine Being. Total darkness is preferred to the 
baleful light. Better no sun, frowning with lurid glare, than 
that the green earth, with myriads of people, should be scorched 
with deathless heat. A law of Nature, — an impersonal and un- 
thinking God inextricably enveloped in the folds of matter, and 
only to be discovered as a no-God, would be the most grateful 
religion to such a woe- worn world. 

But men are not wont to rest in the doctrine of eternal evil, 
until it is proven past all gainsaying ; and the belief of a personal 
God is almost as natural as the disbelief of eternal Evil. Hence 
the assertion of eternal suffering as a revealed doctrine, tends 
not so directly to Atheism as to a rejection of the Bible for some 
form of Deism. Of this the scepticism of the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, the eloquent defender of the doctrine of divine providence, 
is an example. "There is a tradition," says Dr. Kippis, "that 
amongst other difficulties which occurred to him in regard to the 
truth of the Christian Revelation, he was startled at the idea of 
its containing the doctrine of the eternity of hell-torments ; that 
he consulted some eminent churchmen whether the New Testa- 
ment positively asserted that doctrine ; and that, upon being as- 
sured that it did, he declared himself incapable of assenting to a 
system of religion which maintained a tenet so repugnant to all 
his views of the great Government of the Universe." ^ 



1 Biog. Britan., Lond. 17S9. 



64 



EVIL AND GOD. 



It will not do here to say that sceptics are bad men, rejecting 
the Scriptures not so much because they are supposed to reveal 
an eternal punishment, as because they do teach a future retri- 
bution. True it is that fallen man dislikes a God of justice. 
But when Christians overlook the difference between finite and 
infinite punishment, or rather, between infinite loss and endless 
pain, they may, instead of removing a stumbling block, only give 
new occasion of offence. Thinking men are loth to hear of a 
God who can not punish at all but Hs must punish eternally. 
And so long as the doctrine of endless suffering is commonly 
regarded as essential to the Christian system, we must not wholly 
ignore it. If the sceptic need not believe it, let us frankly tell 
him so.^ 

Deism, as a negative religion, is the most natural form of 
scepticism. But it does not solve the problem of Evil. That 
still remains, after the curtain has dropped between God and the 
world. Moral evil is then likely to be resolved into mere natu- 
ral evil. For if the principles of moral duty are not only not 
created, but are not administered, by a divine Ruler of the world, 
they soon become a mere law of nature. The highest duty then 
is "to live according to nature;" a phrase that means much or 
little, according as one has learned to cherish spiritual or mate- 
rial interests. The delights of virtue, as inherently attractive 
and self-rewarding, may be extolled for a time, even to the just 
shame of those who regard duty as the creature of law, an 

1 The Evangelical Alliance has published its Prize Essay on the causes and 
cure of Infidelity ; but the reader could not infer whether the doctrine in ques- 
tion was ever believed or doubted. The same is true of the work entitled 
" Theism," one of the late Buraet Prize Essays. The author, however, has per- 
haps intimated an opinion in the expressions : " The kingdom of divine order, we 
are assured, shall yet prevail throughout the whole moral, as now throughout the 
whole physical world" (p. 421); and, "He (Christ) alone has made all who 
believe in Him to feel with an unconquerable conviction that they shall never 
die " (p. 415, where he cites John xi. 25, 26). The author of the " Echpse of 
Faith" has in his " Defence" simply remarked that God is " not willing to punish 
any, and when He does finally punish, {that at least is the declaration of the 
Bible, however we may dispute about some texts,) punishing only accoi'ding to 
demerit iu this life." (p. 69.) 



PANTHEISM. THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. 



65 



appointed method of enjoyment, a means and not an end. But 
if Virtue has no divine Protector, and suffers many insuhs, she 
may all too soon submit to the customs of a rude and fatherless 
world ; vice and its punishment shall then mean only imprudence 
and consequent suffering. Then all things are resolved into a 
blind course of Nature, and " by the magic-lantern of Pantheism 
all the colors of good and evil" are "mingled^ and both one and 
the other softened down into a dull grey." ^ 

In many minds, tliis process will be arrested by retaining the 
notion. of God as Goodness and Providence, after he has been 
dismissed as Ruler and Judge. The principle that all punish- 
ment is reformatory, love in disguise, not at all retributive, 
is pushed to a suicidal extreme. Justice never kills. The pains 
of guilt are the symptoms of returning health. All will be saved. 
The All-Providence will bring every moral being to its proper 
course, and its final welfare. Sin is not hazardous. Here the 
old logic is reapplied. Sin is not sinful. Man is not free. Evil 
is only natural, — a part of the system of things, — an imperfect 
good, — a first lesson in the divine life, — a heritage which the 
All-Father has bequeathed. With Him, it was either a neces- 
sity or a plan, — fate or choice. Thus the popular theology of 
universal salvation comes round to the old problems, to contrib- 
ute in its turn to the forces of scepticism. 

TVe cannot better close this argument than with the words of 
an eminent writer before cited, who offers " the consideration that 
the generally received opinion regarding the endless duration of 
the state of punishment, is among the most effective of all the 
causes which are at present inducing amongst us that virtual 
abandonment of Christianity, which assigns a mythic sense to 
almost every part of the sacred oracles. Learnedly and wisely 

that fallacy has been combated by many, their yet more seri- 
ous attention might, perhaps, be advantageously given to the 
iuvjuiry whether that opinion, which is to so large a number 
an insuperable rock of offence, might not be either retracted or 



1 Tholuck, Guido and Julius, p. 47. 
6* 



66 



EVIL AND GOD. 



qualified without any sacrifice of truth; and whether, if so, they 
would not contribute by such an acknowledgment, to reclaim the 
deserters to the camp much more effectually than by any assault 
on the positions in which they have openly entrenched them- 
selves." ^ 

1 Stephen, Essays iu Eccl. Biog. 11. 504, Epilogue. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE THEODICIES.i 

" Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." 
§ 1. THEODICY A DUTY. ABSOLUTISM. 

"While the doctrine of eternal suffering appears to give a 
choice of three unsatisfactory theories of the divine nature, it 
may yet be asked if it is not a method or a necessity of the 
divine justice. For if endless penal evil can be shown to be 
just, however hard it may seem to God or man, the vindication 
of the common theology is complete, and the difficulties we have 
set forth must vanish in the light of a clearer day. However 
greatly our faith may be burdened now, such a settlement of the 
question must be final ; for the rigid application of a principle 
of justice can never be so disastrous as that there should be no 
justice in the world. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum." 

We not only admit the appeal, but we welcome it as a renun- 
ciation of the absolutist theology we have just examined. But 
as we prosecute the appeal to the higher court of Theodicy, we 
should tarry for a moment to show that an absolutist theodicy is 
self-contradictory and impossible, and that the distinctions of 
right and wrong can not be created by the pure arbitrament of 
God. 

Dr. Twisse, Prolocutor of the "Westminster Assembly, says of 
the punishments of the lost : " These judgments of God are tre- 
mendous, I confess ; but they are not to be brought before the 
tribunal of human wisdom and justice, nor examined and dis- 
cussed by the rules of our reason and equity. Especially as it 

1 The -word Theodicy signifies a vindication of Divine Jvistice. 



68 



THE THEODICIES. 



is lawful for God the Creator to treat a creature, however inno- 
cent, in whatever manner He pleases, whether it seem good to 
God to annihilate him, or to inflict upon him any torture what- 
ever."^ And, making a distinction between justice ordained 
and justice absolute, he says : " There is no such thing in God 
as justice properly so called, in respect to his creatures; that is, 
by which He is bound to them. But that which is called the 
justice of God in respect to creatures is only His fidelity, which 
supposes a promise. . . . I acknowledge no other justice in 
God than that by which He wisely orders all things to effect his 
own purposes." ^ 

This statement implies and almost expresses the higher argu- 
ment, that God has a right to do what He will because He is 
the Creator of all. But this is to appeal to a principle of jus- 
tice in the nature of things ; a principle older than any act of 
creation, and without wdiich God could have no eternal right to 
reign. And what is called God's " ordained justice," and his 
obligation to fidelity, presupposes an uncreated and undecreed 
rule of justice, without which God could not be bound by his 
promise, but might break his oath as freely^ as he made it. God 
is bound to keep his covenant, not only because He makes it, but 
because the principles of truthfulness and justice are eternal. 
And we shall entertain the most exalted views of God, not by 
supposing that He is above character, and too great to be just, 
but by regarding Him as most truly representing and realizing 
all that is great and just and good. It is his perfection to love 
the right, not because it is his handiwork, but because it is indeed 
right. " He doth not fondly love himself because He is himself, 
but because He is the highest and most absolute goodness ; so 
that if there could be anything in the world better than God, 
he would love that better than himself. But because He is 
essentially the most perfect good, therefore He can not but love 
his own goodness infinitely above all other things." ^ To sup- 

1 Vindicise, 1. 3, err. 6, § 1, p. 21, ed. 1632. 2 ib. 1. 2, pars 1, § 5, pp. 15, 16. 

3 Cudworth, Sermon before the House of Commons. Compare Plato's 
Euthyphro; — Theologia Germanica, c. 32; — Jona'n Edwards, End in Creation, 
c. 1. § 1 ; On the Affections, Works, III. 114 : " Holiness is the beauty of the 



THEODICY A DUTY. — ABSOLUTISM. 



69 



pose that the qualities of justice and holiness are created by 
God's pure will is not only to leave the faith and worship of 
man without reason, but it blots out the sun behind the cloud, 
and leaves God himself without a reason for any of his 
doings. 

But we should not overlook a plausible side of the argument 
from God's sovereignty. Are not all things His by right of 
creation ? and may He not do what He will with his own ? 
Does not Paul silence an objector by saying : " Who art thou 
that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to Him 
that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the 
potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one ves- 
sel unto honor, and another to dishonor ? " Very true ; but 
Paul here appeals to the divine sovereignty to vindicate, not 
the justice of God's punishments, but his right of election 
among his creatures to give eternal life to whom He will. They 
could establish no right to be created or to posess immortality. 
Their existence was from the first a gift ; its continuance is a 
special grace. God may appoint to the dishonor of death — 
which even the heathen know to be the just judgment of the 
law — whom He will. He may assign the means and opportu- 
nities of salvation to whom he will. And though He does and 
must respect the characters they form, and give his final judg- 
ments accordingly, the rule of his original election may be not 
only a mystery to our reason, but as dependent on his pure will 
as the location or relative position of stars and systems of worlds 
in absolute space. God's punisliments must be just ; but his 
gifts may be as free in respect to the subjects of them as the 
universe is large. 

But if there are principles of justice, by virtue of which we 
are able to say that God is just, it follows that justice is one 
and uniform, the same in heaven and on earth. As the law of 
attraction is the same for atoms and for worlds, so justice changes 

Godhead, the divinity of the Divinity, the good of the infinite Fountain of good 
without which God himself would be an infinite evil, and there would better 
have been no being." 



70 



THE THEODICIES. 



not, whether applied to the relations of the finite or of the Infi- 
nite. We have no more occasion to say with the ancients that 
" the gods have a justice of their own," ^ or to interpret the 
prophet's appeal from man's distrust to God's pardoning love 
as if it had been said : " As the heavens are above the earth, so 
his ways are not our ways, nor his principles our principles." 

And as the appeal to mystery is not sustained by the use which 
Paul makes of the divine sovereignty, so neither is it often relied 
on by those who make it. A very few eminent theologians 
have accepted the doctrine of eternal suffering with no theory 
whatever to reconcile it with the justice of God ; but while they 
accept it with most implicit confidence, their faith is most bur- 
dened by it. By far the greater number of those who have 
written on the subject have striven to vindicate the divine jus- 
tice, and to transfer the dire problem from the domain of mys- 
tery to that of reason. Their theories are offered more or less 
confidently, either as triumphant vindications or as possible ex- 
planations that may silence objection ; but they are arguments 
to support a trembling faith. And while the great number of 
different and even opposite theodicies indicates the doubtfulness 
of the doctrine itself, the prevailing resort to theodicy, and the 
distress of those who can find no theodicy, show that the doctrine 
was not designed for a mystery. 

We might, then, at the outset, infer that the doctrine of eter- 
nal suffering is probably false, and that another doctrine of 
eternal punishment is both revealed and can be vindicated before 
the bar of man's reason and conscience. But not to anticipate 
our argument, Ave may here affirm that Theodicy is a duty. 
We must not only believe that God is just, but in the funda- 
mental principles of His government, we may know Jiow He is 
just. The conviction that God is just would be a barren ab- 
straction — an empty, though sublime, first truth of conscience — 
if we understood not some things which His justice requires. 
Conscience is other and better than superstitious fear, just be- 
cause it apprehends a reason for duty, and a reason for penalty. 



1 Sunt superis sua jura.'' 



SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 71 

Sovereignty and mystery may hide countless and fothomless 
details of the divine administration, where Faith shall have 
ample sphere and endless scope ; but the eternal progress of the 
" sons of God " is in a " reasonable service," where filial love 
and 9J1 enlightened moral sense are ever assimilating their feel- 
ings and thoughts to His own. In order to this progress, the 
many principles of common yet absolute and universal justice 
(which even bad men confess and understand, because they are 
men made after the likeness of God), must be our familiar 
thoughts ; so that we may devoutly admire how completely God 
has fitted us to bear his image, and that the rational conviction 
of our many errors may lead us on from them to Him. It is 
only by knowing what is right, just, true, and good, that we can 
know what is God himself. 

The appeal from mystery to reason and conscience is not only 
required by the consideration of our moral nature, and of the 
nature of justice, but it is sanctioned by the words of Christ : 
" Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? " 
And these words may preclude the objection to man's judgment 
respecting the penalty of sin, that he is an interested party, and 
may be swayed by a partial self-love. True, man does fondly 
love himself; but this love, more than almost anything else, 
gives him the most lively fears respecting the future ; we shall 
find it devising and urging several arguments for the doctrine 
of eternal suffering. And if the objection is pressed beyond 
the purpose of a caveat, it would prove too much, and we 
should have to accept the worst conceivable future punishment 
as just, since anything less might be a fond delusion of hope. 
But happily, conscience, as if it were the voice of God in the 
soul, is not silenced by the clamors of interested fear or hope. 
If that voice is ever hushed, the soul is lost, and all other appeal 
is for ever in vain. If it is God's appointed umpire, let us 
make our appeal, confident of the truest verdict. 

§ 2. SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 

Since the mere supremacy or sovereignty of God fails to 
vield a Theodicy, this has been sought in His nature as an 



72 



THE THEODICIES. 



infinite Being, perfect in all divine attributes. The distinction 
here is not strictly between the natural and the moral attributes 
of God, but between His rank and His greatness. The last 
theory regards God as above all control; the present theory 
regards Him as beyond all limitation. It is thus stated by 
Hooker : " Sin hath two measures whereby the greatness 
thereof is judged, — the object, God against whom; and the 
subject, the creature in whom sin is. By the one measure all 
sin is infinite, because He is infinite whom sin offendetli ; for 
which cause there is one eternal punishment due in justice unto 
all sinners. In so much that if it were possible for any crea- 
ture to have been eternally with God, and co-eternally sinful, it 
standeth with justice by this measure to have punished that 
creature from eternity past, no less than to punish it unto future 
eternity. And therefore the time which cometh between the 
birth and death of such as are to endure this punishment, is 
granted them by dispensation as it were, and toleration, at God's 
hand. From that other measure, which is according to the sub- 
ject of sin, there are in that eternity of punishment varieties, 
whereby may be gathered a rule much built upon in holy Scrip- 
ture,— that degrees in wickedness have answerable degrees in 
the weight of their endless punishment." ^ 

This statement guards against the common objection that in- 
finity admits no differences of degree. This point is also finely 
illustrated by the elder Edwards, by the three dimensions of 
space, of which in a supposed case one may be infinite and the 

1 Eccl. Polity, b. 5, app. 1. Compare Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1. 1, c. 15; — 
Aquinas, Surama Theol. pars 3, q. 99, art. 1: " Secundum Philosophum [Aris- 
totle, Ethic. 1. 5, c. 5, where we find the slenderest support of the argument] 
poena taxatur secundum dignitatem ejus in quern peccatur; " — Spinoza, Eth- 
ices, pai-s 1, prop. 21, and Tennemann's remark, Hist, of Phil., § 339 ; — Calvin, 
Inst. Chr. Rel. 1. 3, c. 25, § 5 ; — Cornelius a Lapide, Comm. in Matt. xxv. 46 ; — 
Lucas, in Matt, xxv, 46: " OfFenditur Deus seternus et infinite magistatis;" — 
Mosheim, Ewigkeit der Hollenstrafen, p. 356; — Poole, Synopsis Crit., in Matt. 
XXV. 46; — Owen, Person of Christ, c. 16; — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12; — 
Watts, World to Come, Disc. 13, § 1 ; —A. Fuller, Works, HI. 828 ;— John Rob- 
inson, Works I. 213; — Edwards, Sermon on Rom. iii, 19; — Bellamy, Works, I. 
50, 70, 244 ;— Hopkins, Works, U. 340, sq.; — J. Huntington (Restorationist), 
Calvinism Improved, pp. 44, 45; — J. Pye Smith, Fii-st Lines of Christian The- 
ology; — Lacoudre (CathoHc), Theodicea,.Inst. Phil., 11. 314; and many others. 



SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 73 

others finite and variable quantities. He likewise expands the 
argument very fullv. 

The argument admits four replies : 1. That the loss of eter- 
nal life is an infinite punishment. 2. That by parity of reason- 
ing any punishment coming from God is infinite. 3. That by 
parity of reasoning obedience to God has infinite merit. 4. 
That the argument itself is faulty, as it deduces infinite quali- 
ties from the relations of finite things. 

The first of these replies belongs to a subsequent argument. 
The second also, with the brief statement of it here in the words 
of Tillotson : " By the same reason that the least sin committed 
against God may be said to be infinite because of its Object, the 
least punishment that is inflicted by God may be said to be in- 
finite because of its Author." ^ This reply is in keeping with the 
lofty tone of the argument as a meditation of the greatness of God, 
which is its real merit, if it does not degenerate into a mathematical 
recreation, and lose its moral character. In this form it appears 
in the reply of Socrates, to a sophist arguing that if God is 
too great lo be profited by human worship, we need not praise 
or serve Him, — so much the more reason why we should 
adore Him. But obviously the greater majesty of God makes 
his frown the more terrible. 

To the third reply it will be objected that the greatness of 
God enhances our obligation to obey, and thus at once diminishes 
the merit of obedience, and increases the guilt of sin. But if so, 
then toward God obedience has no merit whatever, and virtue 
is.no longer a rewardable thing in the world; for all duties are 
due, directly or indirectly, to God. Now in truth virtue consists 
in love to a being, either as worthy or as needy ; and the greater 
the love the greater the virtue. If God be its object, the effort 
of the virtuous man to comprehend and know God — by faith 
embracing Him' — is his merit. And whatever be the object of 
holy love, God is as infinitely pleased with it as He can be dis- 
pleased with any guilt or sin which is a feeling equally strong in 
the mind of the creature. 

And this leads us to what we regard as the true refutation of 

1 Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46. 

7 



74 



THE THEODICIES. 



the argument from God's infinite nature. Infinity is something 
which can not be imparted to any creature or to any of the 
creature's acts. Man's relation to God gives him no infinite 
quality, simply because he can not comprehend and take in the 
whole of God. Man's capacity is his measure, and the full 
measure, of his mightiest acts. His conscious relation to God, 
his conception of the idea of God perfect in all divine attributes, 
does indeed enlarge his capacity ; but he does not therefore con- 
tain God, or become a god. " Canst thou by searching find out 
God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is 
as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what 
canst thou know ? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, 
and broader than the sea." Man's relation to God is like that 
of the atom to the world ; it is attracted by every other atom in 
tlie universe, but their united force does not give it infinite 
weight. And if there were but one created intelligence, upon 
whom all the thoughts of God's heart were bestowed, he would 
be only as the little weight which might, by infinite contrivance, 
be Fiiade to balance the world, — none the weightier for all the 
mechanism. Man is still a light thing, before God. His like- 
ness to God, his power to love God, only resembles him to the 
needle that is drawn by the magnet ; he acquires a new power, 
and a growing, but never an infinite life. 

And heie v/e may answer an argument from the comparison 
of various objects of duty. If to a created sovereign man is 
bound by a finite obligation, why not infinitely, to the sovereign 
King ? We reply, all duty is imperative ; yet the rule of duty, 
and the measure of duty, are different things. Objectively, it is 
regulated and determined by the relations we sustain. Our 
obligations may be lower or higher, — one overruled by another; 
they may be temporary or permanent, relative or absolute. But 
subjectively, all duty is measured by the capacity of the moral 
agent. This is the first principle of the divine law, — love to 
the supreme object of duty, with all the heart, soul, mind, and 
strength. The law forbears to demand infinite love, not because 
God is unworthy, but because we are finite. He claims our 
hearts away from the bondage of earthly affections, as the 



SIN AGAINST GOD AS AN INFINITE BEING. 



75 



stronger magnet draws away from the weaker ; but His suprem- 
acy gives us no infinity. 

For, in truth, the idea of infinity is, in a finite mind, simply 
negative. It is the denial of all bound and limit. Let the fancy 
exhaust itself in its largest conceptions, — there is ever something 
beyond; and this infinite beyond is just what man can never 
conceive. He knows it only as that which he can never know. 

The argument from God's infinity is sometimes urged with 
special reference to one or other of His attributes, particularly 
His holiness and justice. But what, we ask, is meant by infinite 
holiness ? We can understand infinite power, as that which is 
not diminished by the creation of unnumbered worlds; and infi- 
nite wisdom as that which is perplexed by no difficulty, but can 
devise all possible things; and infinite goodness and love as that 
which is unexhausted making a universe blessed. But holiness 
refers to a standard. It is the purity, the glorious perfection of 
God. In its very nature it can not be infinite because it can not 
be more or less than perfect. The same is true of God's justice. 
To do justly is to do that which is strictly right and correct. 
Justice is straightness, uj)rightness. It is the same thing in 
God, only in the administration of his government it has an infi- 
nite range of application. In each single application it refers 
necessarily to the finite. In its very nature it seeks out the 
limitations of things. To speak of infinite justice, or justness, is 
as absurd as to speak of a line as infinitely straight ; of a circle 
as infinitely round ; of a certain triangle as infinitely equiangu- 
lar ; or of a certain number as infinitely twenty or thirty. The 
plausibility of the argument from God's infinity is, however, easily 
explained ; the indiscriminate use of the term " infinite " gives 
it a vague atmosphere of indefiniteness that bewilders the mind. 
The mist is dispelled when one asks the proper meaning of the v/ord. 
■ It is obvious that this theodicy does not escape the charge of 
Dualism. Rather, it makes the very greatness of God the 
source of his weakness. His infinite being empowers the slight- 
est evil to do Him infinite injury. His infinite dignity subjects 
Him to infinite insults without number. His infinity is trans- 



76 



THE THEODICIES. 



ferred to every puny arm of finite creature, and becomes in 
every guilty Land a sceptre of dominion, demanding an eternity 
of vindictive concern in answer to an idle word of profane lips. 
The argument utterly perverts the sublime sentiment of Scrip- 
ture : "If thou sinnest, what doest thou against Him? or if thy 
transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him?" "Will 
He reprove thee for fear of thee ? Will He enter with thee into 
judgment? Is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquities 
numberless?" (Job xxxv. 6; xxii. 4, 5.) Where the sense 
seems to be : Your sins must have been exceedingly grievous or 
long continued, thus to provoke the notice of high Heaven.-^ 

§ 3. SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE ? 

But the language of Eliphaz to Job, just cited, is only half 
of the truth. God is not the impassible being of the Epicu- 
rean and the Hindoo philosophy, wrapt up in a dignified, heart- 
less indifference respecting the world. As a God of love He 
must delight in those who obey Him, and He is equally grieved 
with those who sin against Him. "Behold," says one, "sin is 
so hateful to God, and grieveth Him so sore, that He would 
willingly suffer agony and death, if one man's sins thereby might 
be washed out. And if He were asked whether He would 
rather live and that sin should remain, or die and destroy sin 
by his death. He would answer that He would a thousand times 
rather die. For to God one man's sin is more hateful, and 
grieveth Him worse than His own agony and death. Now if 
one man's sin grieveth God so sore, what must the sins of all 
men do ? Hereby ye may consider, how greatly man grieveth 
God with his sins." ^ 

iThe theodicy is rejected as Manichsean by Duns Scohis, 0pp. VII. 412, 418, 
422, ed. Lugd. 1C39, cited by Strauss, Glaubenslehre, § 69. It is censured by 
Warbm-ton, Divine Legation, b. 9, c. 1: — Kant, Eeligion innerhalb der Grenzen 
der blossen Vernunft, b. 2, § c; — Doederlein, Inst. Theol. Chr., § 223, obs. 3; — 
Magee, On the Atonement, Diss, xiii; — John Foster, Life and Corresp., Let. 
226 ; — Henry Kogers, Essay on tlie Genius and Writings of Edwards, p. 1 : *' In 
reasoning on the infinite nature of all sin, Edwards appears to fall into his 
besetting vice, — verbal reasoning, which he is very apt to do when treating of 
infinitude;" — R. W. Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, pp. 406, 407. 

2 Theologia Germanica, c. 37. 



SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE. 



77 



This attribute of God as a being of feelings and emotions, 
is wrougbt into a theodicy by the author of the " Conliict of 
Ages." "If any thing," says he, "is prominent and uncon- 
tradicted in the Bible, it is the great doctrine that the entrance 
of evil has involved a period of long-continued suffering to God. 
Indeed it is the grand characteristic of the present system, that 
all the glorious results to which God is conducting the universal 
system have been purchased at the expense of his own long- 
continued and patiently-endured sufferings. In this He gives 
to the universe the highest possible proof of pure, disinterested, 
self-sacriticing love." And afterwards, summing up the results 
of his theory, he says : ''It alone leads to such an understanding 
of the doctrine of future eternal punishments as, connected with 
the previous suffering of God, shall properly throw the moral 
sympathies of all holy minds on the side of God, and put an 
end to that reaction which tends so fatally to destroy the true 
and indispensable power of that doctrine." ^ 

It is not sufiicient to reply to this, that the language is anlhi'o- 
popathic ; for this is a scriptural mode of representation,^ as it 
is a necessity of all human thought and speech respecting God. 
Man can conceive of the infinite and the eternal only under 
limitations. He can not apprehend God as a personal Being, 
except as also finite. All human theology is of necessity an- 
thropomorphic. " I speak as a man," said Paul, describing the 
feelings of God respecting the conduct of men. And such 
words as "repentance," "grief," "anger," and "jealousy," 
though they tell the wrong feelings as v/ell as the right feel- 
ings of men, may, nevertheless, indic'ate divine truth that could 
not otherwise be told. And Dr. B. properly asks : " Does it 
exalt our ideas of God, and show the infinite difference between 
Him and a creature, to assert that He can put himself and all 

1 Pp. 487, 490, 491. For statements "which vre hope to show are equivalent, 
see Charnock, Discourse on Practical Atheism: " The soul of man deser^-es an 
infinite punishment for despising an infinite good;" — Lacoudre, Theodicea, 
Instt. Phil., 11. 316: Quid mirum igitur si portea implacabili odio Deus vice 
sua contemptum amorem ulciscitur ? " — Crousaz, Examen du Pyn-homsme, 
Part ni. c. 13, § 52. 

2 See Gen. vi. 6 ; Hos. xi. 8 ; Nahum i. 2. 



78 



THE THEODICIES. 



his plans fully into the mind of that creature ? Or does it, on 
the other hand, most exalt God to say that He is so vast that 
no created mind can fully comprehend Flim or his plans, and 
that it is beyond his power to destroy the infinite chasm that 
separates Creator and creature?" (p. 476.) 

But is God indeed made infinitely unhappy by the sins ot 
men ? No one believes this, and for various reasons. 

1 . The moral perfection of God is not impaired by the exist- 
ence of sin in the world. He is no party to its introduction ; 
behind His abhorrence of it there was no secret purpose that it 
should exist ; His relations to wrong are all right. If they 
were not, then might He suffer unmeasured sorrow. But His 
integrity is unsullied ; the divine conscience is not concerned 
with human guilt ; and thus far, at least. His blessedness is un- 
disturbed.-^ 

2. The limitations of human capacity are no cause of grief 
to God. We are told indeed of " the necessary liability of 
finite minds to unbelief and distrust of God, when exposed to 
the inevitable trials which pertain to an infinite system, such as 
befits God ; " and of " finite capacities, and a consequent liability 
in the first generations of creatures to unbelief, distrust, and sin, 
involving a season of suffering in God." ^ But in itself, this 
finite nature is God's work, v/ith which He was well pleased, 
pronouncing it " very good." It is not the cause of evil, but 
only renders sin possible. It gives one of the proximate solutions 
of the old problem. In one view, .it makes the mystery of sin 
more profound. For the conscious weakness of the creature 
is the weightiest reason for trust and confidence in the Creator. 
The theodicy last considered sometimes takes just this form, — 
that the sin of creatures is infinitely heinous, because they, with- 
out having comprehended God, or weighed the Infinite in bal- 
ances, have rejected and condemned Him as unworthy of their 
confidence. In fact, men are guilty, not because they under- 
stand so little of God, but because they know so much -of Him. 
"• If ye were blind, ye should have no sin ; but now ye say, We 

1 M. P. Squier, The Problem Solved, or Sin not of God, p. 55. 
2 Conflict of Ages, p. 475. 



SIN AGAINST GOD AS INFINITE LOVE. 



79 



see ; therefore your sin remaineth." There is indeed the sin of 
ignorance or of passion, and of presumption, — the pardonable 
and the unpardonable, — whence the problem of the origin of 
evil is two-fold ; to explain the transition from faith to distrust, 
and from distrust to malignity. But in either form, man's guilt 
cannot injure God ; it is simply a rejection of his love. In so 
far as sin comes of weakness, God cannot be grieved, as the 
sage is not grieved wdth unlettered simplicity, though he may 
pity it. In so far as sin matures in hatred of God, it may, in 
the dramatic language of the Bible, provoke His indignation, 
or the smile that says He is infinitely beyond the reach of 
malice. His plans are not disconcerted, or his peace disturbed 
by the rebellion of mighty ones. " He that sitteth in the 
heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision." 
If He deigns to notice them it is not his necessity but his 
choice. 

3. God's love for all his creatures is free. It is a gift of His 
favor. The very pain and grief which it does occasion to 
God is disinterested; it is the earnestness, the fullness, the 
bounty of love. Disappointed, or unrequited, the divine love 
appears in the form of anger, like that of the pnrent toward 
the undutiful child. The very grief is an emotion of love, and 
cannot outlive it. The execution of divine justice is a painful 
thing to God, His " strange work," because " God is Love ;" and 
in this He differs from heartless Nature and relentless Fate. 

The divine grief, then, is a gift. But whatever is truly given, 
cannot afterwards be charged as a debt. And here is the radi- 
cal and enormous error of this theodicy. It represents Infi- 
nite Goodness as not only ceasing to love the creature, but 
revoking the long-tried affection in the form of an account that 
can never through eternity be liquidated. What is generously 
given (and it must be generously or not at all) is given. But 
according to this theodicy, God's own love is only granted as a 
loan, at an infinite rate of interest, the payment of which will 
be demanded through endless ages if the original love be^not 
reciprocated. This vindication of divine justice consists in a 
ruinous draft upon the divine grace. The proper chai-acter of 



80 



THE THEODICIES. 



each is destroyed. The grace is no more gi-ace, and ihe justice 
is no longer just. 

The logical results of this theodicy are thus even fearful, as 
will further appear in subsequent discussions. We shall also 
meet with similar perversions of the idea of grace, and attempt, 
in the proper place, to give an explanation of them, as phenom- 
ena of man's fallen estate. 

The Dualism of the theodicy is also manifest. While it offers 
to restore the gift of divine love, as a lost treasure to its owner, 
it nevertheless exposes the divine heart, as a tender nerve, an 
open wound, to the smiting of every careless hand. It puts 
infinite blessedness at the mercy of every trustless son of man, 
and makes infinite goodness the victim of millions of evil crea- 
tures. And the returned gift itself becom.es a debt burdensome 
for collection by the eternal justice. 

§ 4. SIN AS AGAINST THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

The theodicies already examined are based upon various attri- 
butes of the divine nature. But with respect to God as a Ruler 
it is said that "If temporal punishments are justified on the 
ground that they are necessary to meet the exigencies and uphold 
the interests of temporal governments, surely eternal punish- 
ments may be justified on the same ground, in relation to an 
eternal government." ^ And sin, " as tending to infinite anarchy 
and mischief, must be infinite. All that is meant by calling sin 
infinite evil is, that it is deserving of endless punishment ; and 
this can never be fiiirly objected to as an absurdity. If there be 
no absurdity in the immortality of a sinner's existence, there is 
none in supposing him to deserve a punishment, be it in what 
degree it may, that shall run commensurate with it." ^ 

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, p. 307. 

2 A. Fuller, Veneration for the Scriptures. Compare various representations 
of sin as Treason; — Dodwell, Letter on the Soul, Pref. § 5 : " This perpetuating 
of human nature for punishment could not be justtyinflicted till a publication 
of God's pleasure, that he judged the Devil a public enemy, and that all -who did 
not join the body instituted by himself, should be taken for associates of the 
Devil; " — Lacoudre, Theodicea, p. 315: " Sapiens legislator sufficlentem debet 



SIN AS AGAINST THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 81 



Upon the face of it this argument is not so much a vindication 
of God's justice as an assertion of his necessity. It is not claimed 
that sin is inherently deserving of endless woe, but that such a 
penalty is infinitely needful. The notion that the penalty is 
intrinsically just is formally abandoned by one of the assertors 
of it, thus : " What proportion ought to be appointed betwixt 
crimes and penalties is not so properly a consideration of justice 
as of prudence in the lawgiver." Hence, " whatever the dispro- 
portion may be between temporary sins and eternal punishments, 
justice cannot be said to be concerned in it." ^ This is really an 
inversion of the old maxim, and we are now told, perhaps, that 
" injustice must be done, lest the heavens fall." Evil is allowed 
to triumph, as a thing expedient. The theodicy is not only 
dualistic ; it compels the Judge of all to be the author of eternal 
wrong. In a supposed emergency, it substitutes a police regu- 
lation for a principle of justice. But it is forgotten that the 
policy itself is suicidal ; for punishment can have no restraining 
power, it can not be exemplary, unless it is just. To suppose it 
just because exemplary, is, in the literal sense, preposterous. 

The theory might be dismissed here. But it is in fact an 
expression of panic fear, which is not allayed by any considera- 
tions of justice. We must inquire into the supposed danger. 

1. It cannot be the eternal sufferings of the lost, for that is 
the very thing to be proved. And such a punishment would be 
only another form of the danger. 

2. It cannot be the defection of holy angels and glorified 
saints. For that is to charge them not only with imperfection, 
but with radical defect. It is to say that they serve God only in 
terror ; that they have no sincere love of God or of holiness ; 
that their allegiance is either a hypocrisy or a delusion ; that 
there is no moral perfection even among the blessed ; and that 
the principles of virtue, even after having been once installed in 
a nominal kingdom of righteousness, can not stand without the 
support of an eternal evil. 

legibus suis sanctionem tribuere ; atqui, nisi vindicta seterna peccatum plectatur, 
non erit sanctio sufSciens." 
1 Tillotson, Serm. on Matt. xxy. 46. 



82 



THE THEODICIES. 



3. It can not be the failure of all future races of probationary 
beings. For among the human race, with all the disadvantages 
of a fallen state, and ere the supposed exemplary punishment 
begins to be witnessed, multitudes are converted and saved; 
many of them, past all doubt, unmoved by the terror of eternal 
suffering. Much more may it be expected that new orders of 
probationary beings will furnish hosts of perfected ones, without 
the aid of such a terror. 

TJie argument, it should here be noted, often assumes either 
that the creation is yet in its early stages, or that sin has recently 
entered the universe. These are questions to be elsewhere con- 
sidered. 

4. If it is feared that, without the terror of eternal suffering, 
too many either of the human race or of future races will fail of 
eternal life, then, justice aside, the problem becomes one of sim- 
ple arithmetic and calculation. Which is the greater evil,— - 
that a great number should utterly perish, or that a small num- 
ber should endure endless torment ? that myriads should incur 
what some have pronounced to be hardly a punishment, or that 
hundreds should endure infinite evil ? The question is not, how 
many beings shall be finally saved? For creative power is 
exhaustless and unwearied. He who can raise up from the 
stones children unto Abraham, is not impoverished by the loss 
of ten thousand worlds, or burdened in replacing them. Whether 
is better, then, — that a small fraction of a large number should 
be saved from death, and evil be temporary, or that a large frac- 
tion of a small number should be saved from sin and woe, which 
shall be the eternal portion of the remainder ? 

The theodicy, we have remaH^ed, ignores the principle of jus- 
tice. But this is not at all ; it makes a draft upon the grace of 
God. For He is not bound to furnish the restraining terror 
which is claimed. It is due neither to Plimself nor to those who 
are to be saved. Granting that they need it, they cannot de- 
mand it as a right. It would be, rather, the token of their 
moral bankruptcy. If vacancies in heaven must be filled from 
bankrupt worlds, it is God's right to keep them vacant to all 
eternity, and no court in the universe will recognize a counter 



i 

1 



UNIVERSAL DISTRUST. 



83 



claim. If the terror supposed to be needful is granted at all, it 
must be a free gift, an undeserved gratuity. 

§ 0. UNIVERSAL DISTRUST. 

A friend has furnished the following : " The first act of rebel- 
lion in the universe, when it became known, produced a univer- 
sal shock. Every one became alarmed, felt insecure, and became 
suspicious and afraid of every other. The perfect quiet and 
peace of the world was gone, and gone for ever, unless by some 
means a recurrence of the sin could be prevented, and confidence 
be restored. Eternal wrong had been done to every moral be- 
ing in the universe. Eternal pain and displeasure would be felt 
by all who knew and remembered the fact, and a sense of fear 
and insecurity would be universal and eternal unless prevented 
by governmental interference. . . . 

" What penalty would be just and adequate is the question. 
That endless suffering, provided it were severe enough in degree, 
would be sufficient, all will admit. It would also appear the 
natural and appropriate penalty ; "since the injury done is end- 
less." 

This theodicy might be derived by some minds from the na- 
ture of sin as utterly inexplicable and an essential mystery. If 
it originates causelessly, like a planet " rushing madly from its 
sphere," it maybe repeated — here — there — anywhere — and 
no one is safe. Panic terror must be quieted by a salutary fear. 

But the theory makes no distinction between probationary and 
perfected beings. In respect to the proximate solutions of the 
origin of evil, it assumes that they apply to the highest orders 
of being as well as the lowest — the oldest equally with the 
youngest. It would be a consistent result of the argument, we 
think, if it should be feared that God himself might sin, and the 
moral universe crumble with the fall of its Ruler. 

But if, as we believe, no perfected being, or " partaker of the 
divine nature," ever has fallen, the occasion of this panic must 
be sought in the failure of creatures while on probation, and sub- 
ject to ordeal. But such failure need not alarm the universe. 
The fall of our first parents might be a sad event for man, when 



84 



THE THEODICIES. 



" Earth felt the shock ; and Nature from her seat 
Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe 
That all was lost." 

But the event, though sad for man, and perplexing to angels, need 
not alarm them ; for the frailty of all new created moral agency, 
the powers of untried free will, made it not only possible, but in a 
slight degree probable. The wonder would have been, if, in 
myriads of new worlds weakness and ignorance should never re- 
sult in sin. Yet, even if the greater part should give way under 
temptation, and a remnant only be saved, that need not disturb 
the security of the glorified, or even of the saints mihtant. For 
" we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not ; but he 
that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one 
toucheth him not." 

Whether God is under necessity of creating beings so frail as 
man ; or whether this is the bounty of His goodness and wisdom, 
— to raise out of dust heirs of glory, — is a question. If the 
latter be true, then the sins we deplore are indirectly a token of 
God's power. The case of the fallen angels may seem more per- 
plexing. But the Scriptures do not inform us that they were 
ever morally perfect ; and their higher rank at their creation, 
probably subject to severer ordeal than man, might be only a 
slight elevation in the scale of creation, they sinking to motes in 
comparison with higher orders, and all to nothingness before the 
infinite God. 

The destroyed confidence, fear, and pain, supposed in our 
theodicy, we infer, were no proper effect of sin. But if they 
were, the argument is still liable to objection. Must eternal evil 
be installed, to restore the lost confidence ? Must the eternal 
peace and happiness of all beings depend on the co-eternal 
anguish of those who have begun to sin ? Are the delights of 
Paradise and the " fulness of joy " not sufficient to restrain the 
world from plunging into the abyss of annihilation ? So far as 
human beings have lost confidence in God or creature, is it not 
more restored by the renewal of a single heart in the image of 
Christ, than by the supposed exposure of millions to eternal 
woe ? How do earthly rulers restore the lost confidence of their 



SIN AS AGAINST THE UNIYEKSAL WELFARE. 



85 



subjects? Which is the stronger human government, — that in 
which the most dreadful punishments are inflicted, or that in 
which the mere loss of place or favor is so dire that infliction is 
not needed ? And must God for ever afflict the guilty, that the 
innocent may learn to trust in Him ? Admitting the gloomy fact 
which the theory assumes, it provides no remedy, but is 

" An argument 
Of weakness, not of power." 

§ 6. SIN AS AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE. 

Most of the preceding theories, or at least the more usual 
statements of them, are defective in that they build upon an in- 
finity beyond the mind of the transgressor, an infinity beyond 
his power either to injure or to comprehend. An attempt is 
made to supply this defect, and to anchor infinity, as it were, 
within the reason and conscience, as a measure of guilt, in the 
following argument : "1. Moral obligation is founded in the in- 
trinsic value of those interests which moral agents are bound to 
seek as an end. 2. The obligation is conditional upon the 
knowledge of this end. 3. The degree of obligation is just 
equal to the apprehended intrinsic value of those interests which 
they are bound to choose. 4. The guilt of refusal to will those 
interests is in proportion, or is equal, to the amount of the obli- 
gation ; and 5 : Consequently the mind's apprehension or judg- 
ment of the value of those interests which it refuses to will, is, 
and must be, the rule by which the degree of guilt involved in 
that refusal ought to be measured." These interests are "the 
highest well being of God and the universe. This end the 
reason of every moral agent must affirm to be of infinite value, 
in the sense that its value is unlimited. ... If the idea of 
God and of the good of universal being be developed, which is 
implied in moral agency, there must be in the mind the idea or 
first truth, that the good of God and of the universe is infinitely 
8 



86 



THE THEODICIES. 



valuable. . . . Every refusal to v/ill the highest well being 
of God and the universe involves infinite guilt." ^ 

The consistency of different degrees of guilt with its infinity 
is illustrated in the same way as by Edwar^^s. But it is founded 
in a distinction of modern psychology, between conceptions of 
the understanding, and ideas of the reason. " The ideas of the 
infinite, the eternal, the perfect, are ideas of the pure reason." 

It is not essential to this theodicy that man should have infi- 
nite power, so as to be responsible for the universal welfare or 
qualified to be its guardian. The argument puts the will for the 
deed ; which is proper in judging of character. And it is said, 
though man can neither achieve nor destroy a happiness of all 
beings, he may desire and will the welfare of all ; and if he does 
not, it is the same to him, and in the reckoning of his guilt, as if 
there were no universal welfare. 

We will admit for argument's sake that when a man is indif 
ferent or hostile to the good of being, he is as guilty as though 
the heavens did actually fall. In this view, the prevalent theory 
of eternal punishment is insufScient. An immortality, even of 
ever augmented woe, will not punish the sinner. For he would 
have destroyed the eternal welfare, not of a single creature, but 
of innumerable beings. For an equal punishment he should not 
have mere immortality, but an expansion of his being, to an im- 
mensity equaling the created moral universe. And justice is 
but mocked if one of these things is done and not the other. 

But this is not all. The sinner is guilty, not only of a single 
malevolent w^ish or traitorous thought, but of this cherished and 
repeated continually through long years of life. According to 
the argument, if he had had his wish the endless welfare of 
countless beings would have been destroyed over and over again 
a myriad times. For the purposes of retribution, his immortal 

1 Finney, Systematic Theology, Lond. ed., pp. 312, 313. Compare Minucius 
Felix, Octavius, c. 35: " That they who know not God are deservedly tor- 
mented as impious and unjust, none but the profane man doubts ; since to ignore 
the Parent and Lord of all is no less wicked than to injure Him." Leibnitz, 
0pp. VL 310 : " Qui enim vocere vult, non id tantum voluit quod nocuit, sed at 
ea omnia quie, cum non posset, intermisit, qu£E sunt infinita." 



SIN AS AGAINST THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE. 



87 



immensity would not suffice. He must also suffer in ten thousand 
coordinate eternities. 

'Nov is this all ; for it respects only the hostility of the sinner 
to created beings. But God, whose blessedness is also concerned 
in this argument, is at each moment infinitely greater than all 
His creation, and He alone is eternal. Here are demanded yet 
two other infinite factors of the punishment of a single guilty 
soul. 

The necessities of justice are not yet told. They are multi- 
plied anew by the immense number of all the guilty. And if 
the common notion of their eternal wickedness is true, they are 
yet to be augmented by a new and most formidable factor, an 
infinite and ever expanding series. 

Here, in the measure of human guilt, are as many infinite 
factors as all the dimensions of space and time united, and two 
immensities besides ; guilt which all infinity and all eternity 
combined can not begin to contain. Hence, if justice were done, 
so far from God ever becoming All and in all, every vestige of 
his kingdom must be swept far away from being, and the universe 
be filled to copious overflowing, with eternal remorse and woe. 
Thus the glorious perfections of God are transmuted, by the 
mighty attributes of certain "ideas of the pure reason," to a 
deplorable omnimpotence ; and the designs of infinite goodness, 
radiating through the perverse minds of men, are, as by an 
awful magic lantern, thrown upon the sky in a lurid picture 
of triumphant Evil. 

It is confessed by those who hold this theory, that retribution 
never can be executed. And it misrht be ur^ed that since it 
must fail in so many infinite factors, it might as well fail in all, 
and the universe be at some day rid of sin and woe. But the 
frightful results of the theory indicate that it may be radically 
defective, and vre ought to show wdierein. 

All ideas of the pure reason are simply laws of thought. They 
pertain to the form of human thinking, not at all to its objects. 
Hence these ideas contain nothing. They may all be employed 
in the formulas of pure mathematics, where no actual substance 
or thing is conceived, but only the relations of things. Several 



88 



THE THEODICIES. 



of them are negative, or are stated and most clearly apprehended 
in the form of negations. Thus we have already remarked the 
idea of the infinite is that of no limit. The idea does not em- 
brace the limitless, but draws a line and says : Thus far is the 
finite ; the infinite is ever beyond. In no way and in no sense 
can the infinite itself ever be in the grasp of finite mind, or in 
the power of finite wish or will. 

What, then, is the measure of human guilt ? It must be 
sought, evidently, in the conceptions of the understanding. The 
more one comprehends or even suspects, of the greatness of the 
world and of God, the greater is his guilt if he does not fill up 
his conception with tlie feeling of benevolence. The heart must 
go as far as the intellect can reach, in prayer for the creature 
and adoration of the Creator. Further than this it can neither 
go nor be guilty. And this statement agrees with the fact that 
guilt may be greater or less, without respect to the real magni- 
tude of its object, because the conceptio7is of that object may be 
endlessly varied. The child, for example, knowing more of its 
parents than of God, may be more guilty, and may justly feel 
more guilty, in disobeying them, than in disregarding what it 
knows of the Infinite Father. 

But granting what the theodicy assumes, it may also, as an 
argument for eternal suffering, be employed to refute itself. The 
whole problem of the measure of penalty is to be solved by 
finding a connecting link between sin and suffering; and this 
link is the faculty of conscience. Conscience is the seat of re- 
morse, and remorse is the only true punishment ; there the 
" hiding of its power." Pain does not become penalty until it 
reaches the conscience. Physical suffering is the outward form 
of punishment, its body ; conscience, the sense of merited displea- 
sure, is its soul. And the most dreadful punishment may be 
felt when the infliction is least. A reproving glance, that enters 
the conscience directly, is often the most terrible infliction. 

Now conscience pertains to the pure reason as well as to the 
understanding. It recognizes Duty, not as a question of gain or 
loss, of more or less, or as a measure of expediency ; but as 
something right and proper ; imperative ; absolute ; not over- 



IN SUO INFINITO. 



89 



ruled by any possible consideration of interest ; and, so to speak, 
infinite. And in the conscience the pure reason can impart 
infinity to punishment, no less than to sin. One can feel infinite 
ill-desert just as much as one can he infinitely ill-deserving; and 
when such a feeling takes the form of remorse, it is infinite 
punishment, if any infinity is possible within the human mind. 
Eternity is no more requisite for punishment than for guilt. 
God has not, in the constitution of the rational creature, given 
power to commit a sin which He can not also punish. 

§ 7. IN SUO INFINITO. 

In judging of character, as before remarked, the wdll is good 
for the deed. The sinner is to be condemned, not for the evil 
he has accomplished, but for what he has wished to do, and would 
have been glad to do if he could. As he is not to be thanked, 
so neither is he to be acquitted, on the ground that God has pre- 
vented the evil he intended, or has overruled it for good. 

Hence a theodicy similar to the last, and yet distinct from it. 
It is commonly stated so as to embrace the tendencies of sin 
toward infinite evil. We give it in the words of Hopkins : 
" The sinner does all he can to dethrone his Maker and render 
Him infinitely miserable, and ruin his kingdom for ever. Every 
sin has a strong and mighty tendency to this, and no thanks to 
the sinner that this infinite evil has not been effected by his re- 
bellion ; and is his crime not so great because the evil is pre- 
vented by the infinite power and wisdom of God ? He who will 
assert this must renounce all reason and common sense. David, 
inspired to imprecate punishment on the wicked, says : ^ Give 
them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness 
of their endeavors ; give them after the work of their hands ; 
r< nder to them their desert.' (Psalms xxviii. 4.) . . . And 
G;xl, in punishing the wicked for ever, will do no more to them 
than they would have done to Him, had it been in their power ; 
surely this is a just and equitable punishmentj which they fully 
deserve if they deserve any at all." ^ 

1 Works, II. 433, 434. Compai'e Auselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1.7. c. 15 ;— Witsius, 
8* 



90 



THE TUEODICIES. 



All that has been said in our examination of ihe previous 
theodicy, will apply to this. Whatever is peculiar here, is built 
upon an if. Infinite evil lies in the direction of the sinner's 
thoughts ; it is his aim, the tendency of his doings ; he would 
accomplish it, if he could. But his very conceptions fall infinitely 
short of his aim. The infinity with which he has to do is a name 
and not a thing. The suum infinitum is altogether sui generis, 
a mere fragment and figment of infinity. The fallacy lies in the 
illusion of the name. 

The argument, we said, is buiit on a supposition; and this is 
apparent when it is stated in another equivalent form, thus : The 
sinner would abuse infinite power, if he possessed it. In this 
form the argument may be answered either by a doubt, or by an 
extension of it. Are we sure that the sinner would abuse in- 
finite power, and infinite sagacity, without which the pov/er 
would be a brute nothing? Might he not be also wiser? Could 
he be so much of God without a divine goodness ? Is a monster 
Deity conceivable ? For argument's sake, grant it. Then we 
have only to make all the wildest possible suppositions to prove 
the sinner actually guilty of the four-fold infinity of evil we de- 
duced from the last theodicy. If he were an eternal god, filling 
all the spheres he would not leave a point of space without its- 
curse ; therefore he is guilty of this. For, by the argument, 
he tends that way, power alone is wanting, and weakness is not 
innocence. 

To measure the world's guilt now, we should need new factors 
of infinite arithmetic ; which we trust the actual limitation of 
man's moral capacity will dispense with. The theodicy has a 
single element of truth. It expresses a just abhorrence of evil, 
and a corresponding horror of it as a mad fatuity that knows 
no law and brooks no restraint. But this only indicates its des- 
tiny. It is an old saying, " Whom the gods design to destroy, 
they first infatuate." 

Economy of the Covenants, 1. 1, c. 5, § 40; Poole, Annotations, Matt. xxv. 46: 
"Every sinner hath sinned in suo infinito, ... for he had a will to have 
Binned infinitely; " Charnock, On the Eternity of God. 



THE IMPERATIVE NATURE OF DUTY. 



91 



§ 8. THE IMPERATIVE NATURE OF DUTY. 

We have found, we think, a common measure of guilt and 
punishment in the conscience, as a faculty of remorse. It thus 
becomes possible that sin should be punished strictly according 
to its ill-desert ; or that there should be a final retribution ac- 
cording to the things done in the body. But this statement gives 
us only half of the truth. If it were the whole, it would follow 
that when equal punishment has been inflicted, the sinner is 
released from further claim of justice; his debt is paid; punish- 
ment is atonement and expiation ; he is virtually innocent, and 
should be acquitted accordingly. But this we know is not true ; 
and the error is corrected by a consideration which may be 
wrought into a theodicy. 

Duty is imperative. Its language is not that of mere counsel 
and advice, but of command. Man is not told simply that it is 
for his interest to do right, but he ought to do right. His obliga- 
tion is not to himself alone ; if he has any right to forego his 
own pleasure or interest, he has no right to omit a single duty ; 
and no amount of enjoyment to be secured, or of pain to be 
avoided, can give him such right. No possible consideration of 
expediency can make wrong right. No compromise is possible 
between duty and the neglect of it. Moral law holds no parley, 
makes no bargain, forms no treaty stipulations, with him who 
refuses to obey. It sets no price on transgression. Obedience 
is better than any sacrifice, however great. Though one should 
offer thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil, or ten 
thousand worlds, — of wealth or of suffering, — the claim of 
duty would not be done away. No finite measure of penance 
can abrogate it. Above all bartering calculation of reward and 
penalty, conscience sits infinitely supreme, as the voice of God 
h'mself, telling us we have no right to lose the one, or to incur 
the other. Still less have we right to complain, if an undutiful 
curiosity respecting the measure of penalty has not been gratified, 
and we find it, at the last, greater than we can bear. What if 
it should be infinite ? ^ 

1 This was for a time the writer's own theodicy. It is perhaps implied ia the 



92 



THE THEODICIES. 



Such is the theodicy. In reply it is granted that if moral law 
proposed so much suffering for so much guilt, and nothing more, 
the penalty would not be a sanction ; law would be no longer 
binding ; the very words " law " and " duty," would lose their 
meaning. But this would be equally true, if the penalty were 
infinite. Thus, if man could be made into an infinite being, so 
that he could endure an infinite penalty in a moment of time, 
that would not restore him to innocence, or meet the demand of 
the law. Infinite penalty is no more a satisfaction than finite 
penalty. Hence we observe that the doctrine which makes 
Christ's sufferings an infinite satisfaction paid to God for the 
sins of men, does not meet the difiSculty which it proposes. It 
is still demanded that the hearts of men should be changed ; 
otherwise they must themselves pay the penalty of God's law 
over again. The reason is, penalty is not satisfaction in hind; 
and it can not be made so by being increased in degree^ even 
infinitely. Penalty is sanction. Measured suffering is the mulct 
or fine which law imposes, which may also be warning and ad- 
monition ; but it is not of the nature of payment, so that it 
should be any better infinite than finite. Nor does its character 
as a restraint of sin, constitute its proper nature ; for neither the 
fear of eternal suffering, nor eternal suffering itself, are supposed 
always to restrain sin. And since suffering does not meet the 
ends of sanction, either as payment or as restraint, we can regard 
penal suffering only as an adjunct of something else which is the 
true penalty of law, and which, as a sanction, makes it strictly 
imperative. Suffering may be the interest of a debt ; accruing 
with the long forbearance of an indulgent Creditor. 

The fallacy of the theodicy lies in the confusion of the abso- 
lute with the infinite. Duty is absolute; once determined, it 
can be annulled by no other consideration, for it belongs to 
another sphere. But it is not infinite; hence it is no more 
girded and supported by infinite penalty, than by finite. 

This is not all. As an argument for eternal suffering, the 

expressions of Crousaz, Examen du Pyi*rlionisme, Part II. c. 13, § 5; and ol 
Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Siu, II. 455. 



mSTOKlCAL ETERNITY OF SIN. 



9. 



theodicy involves the very difficuhy which it seeks to avoid. 
For duty is not imperative, if in a state of punishment it may 
be eternally violated. Its language then is : " Obey and be 
happy, or — disobey and suffer." Penalty is thus reduced to a 
tax upon sin, and is no longer a prohibition of it. It is so meas- 
ured, too, according to the degree of guilt, that it does not exhaust 
endurance. Hence it may be, and often is, thought of, as con- 
sisting with a measure of happiness. By some it is doubted 
whether the " eternal punishment " is not a mere diminution of 
eternal joy, in a state of salvation. And with this agrees the 
"ethical theology" now so prevalent, of which hereafter. "Whereas, 
the real mandate of Duty, — " Obey and live," — in making death 
the penalty of sin, finds a sanction agreeing with its proper na- 
ture, cuts off the power of persistent transgression, and secures 
itself from eternal outrage. 

§ 9. HISTORICAL ETERNITY OF SIN. 

The unchangeable nature of right has been wrought into vari- 
ous forms of theodicy. The divine Law is eternal. Human 
guilt is eternal, — historically, at least, if not in the evil effects 
of it. Hence we are told : " The criminality and the guilt of a 
crime must continue as long as the crime continues, or till it 
ceases to be a crime, or becomes an innocent action. But can 
murder, for instance, which is a crime in the very nature of 
things, ever become a virtue ? Can time, or obedience, or suffer- 
ings, or even a divine declaration, alter its nature, and render it 
an innocent action? Virtue and vice, sm and holiness, are 
founded in the nature of things, and so must remain for ever 
immutable. Hence that which was once virtuous will for ever 
be virtuous ; that which was once vicious will for ever be vicious ; 
J . . . and that which once deserved punishment will for 
ever deserve punishment. Now if neither the nature of sin can 
i)e changed, nor the guilt of it be taken away, then the damned, 
who have once deserved punishment, will for ever deserve it, 
and consequently God may, in point of justice, punish them to 



94 



^HE THEODICIES. 



all eternity." ^ And again ; " The extinction of the sinner would 
not be the extinction of his sin ; that would live on, in some of 
its effects, for ever, — an inextinguishable protest against the 
perfection of the divine government ; while yet the sinner him- 
self, who first uttered the protest, is supposed to be placed for 
ever, by an act of that government, beyond the reach of punish- 
ment. For, further, the extinction of being is an escape from 
punishment ; so that here would be the singular anomaly, that 
while the dread of punishment is punishment, the infliction itseL 
is the termination of all punishment."^ 

This theory should not be confounded with that of sinfulness 
as ever actual and persistent. So far as it contains truth, it is 
very similar to the theodicy just examined. It asserts the very 
principles which, as we have remarked, make a theodicy possible, 
against the notion that justice is a product of divine might. But 
the fallacy of its deductions is manifest : For 

1. By parity of reasoning, a single act of virtue should be 
eternally rewarded. It never changes its nature, — never ceases 
to be a virtuous act. It remains through all eternity a tribute 
of praise to God. Its benign influences and effects may also be 
eternal. Hence he who has done a single right act, or cherished 
a right feeling, should be for ever happy. 

2. It follows that the pardon of guilt is unjust, or rather 
impossible. Not only does the bare remission of penalty not 
change the character of the sinner, but his actual change from 
sin to holiness does not annul the character of his past acts. 

1 Emmons, Wks, V. 561, 562 ; comp. VI. 180. 

2 Harris, Man Primeval, p. 177. Compare with the last expression, Gregory 
the Great, Moralia, 1. 15, c. 17: " Quia si consmneretm" vita morientis, cum vita 
etiam poena finiretur: " — and with the argument, T. M. Post, Bib. Eepos. Oct. 
1844, pp.313, 315: "It could hardly seem possible that moral distinctions, 
themselves, shovild they not be annihilated, could not fail at least to lose their 
authority, when the soul in which they inhere might, at any moment, utterly 
perish alike from all retribution and all consciousness." And he speaks of 
" the imperishableness of moral acts, and the everlasting continuance of the 
present moral laws of our being;" — Willard, Lectures on the Assembly's 
Catechism, q. 19; — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12; — Nitzsch, System of Christ- 
ian Doctrine, § 219, n. 3; — Lacoudre, Theodicea, pp. 314, 315; — J. H. Hmton. 
Haimony of Keligious Truth, pp. 204, 205. 



HISTORICAL ETERNITY OF SIN. 



95 



They survive his conversion, just as much as they would survive 
his destruction. No act of reformation, nor of reparation, no 
work of atonement, nor suffering of punishment though thrice 
infinite, no return of God's favor, nor effort of Omnipotence, 
can ever expunge his sins from the history of the universe. 
They are graven there as with a pen of adamant, and along with 
their effects they must abide for ever. According to the theory, 
repentance and sanctification must be for ever nugatory; the 
forgiveness of sin is a disregard of the eternal record, and an 
eternal wrong. 

3. When it is said that to be stricken from being would be an 
end of punishment, we reply that if this were true, then no 
penalty, of whatever kind, should ever begin to be inflicted. 
For the beginning of punishment is the infliction of a part 
thereof ; and though that may have been punishment beforehand, 
in the dread of it, now that it is past it ceases to be punishment, 
and is lost. Whence all punishment should for ever remain 
future, and should never begin. But with a strange forgetful- 
ness the theory is here inconsistent with itself. Punishment 
once inflicted can never be un-inflicted. It can never be revoked 
or blotted out from the history of things. Once done, it becomes 
eternal. And this is preeminently true of that penalty which 
blots the sinner out from being. 

So much for the results of the theodicy. It originates in a 
confounding of the abstract with the concrete. As if one should 
say ; Yice can not become virtue ; therefore the vicious man can 
never become virtuous. Guilt can never become innocence ; 
therefore the guilty man must ever be abhorrent to God, and 
must ever subsist, too, lest the abomination should subside into a 
negative principle, — the loathsome substance into a shadow, 
eluding God's indignation, and divine justice be defrauded by 
the abatement of a nuisance. Here is the beginning of that 
worst form of Dualism, that demands an object for God's detest- 
ation, so that His attributes may be known. 

The theory illustrates the fatuity of error. Setting out with 
the principle that sin is essentially wrong, and no divine decree 



96 



THE THEODICIES. 



or conjury or history can change its hateful nature, but taking a 
false direction, it concludes that sin must be for ever incarnate 
and enshrined. That which ought not to be, must be for ever. 
Departing from the true sense of the Scriptural anathema, the 
theodicy rejects what was true in the Koman conception of 
justice, and adopts all that was false in the Greek. It retains 
the rods of the ancient fasces, and immortalizes the criminal ; it 
spares the axe, as striking too fatally, and depleting the govern- 
ment of its strength. It revives the Erynnis of the old myth- 
ology, pursuing her victim with torment, but without power to 
destroy. The sword drops from the hand of Justice, as though 
its employ were suicidal. 

§ 10. SIN AS THE GREATEST EVIL. 

It is often said that sin is the greatest possible evil, and there- 
fore deserves the greatest possible punishment.^ This theodicy 
may be interpreted in three different ways. 

1. If it is taken without explanation or comment, it is too 
rhetorical and indefinite to be of any value. Sins differ in the 
degree of their heinousness, as is admitted even by those who 
regard all sin as infinitely heinous. The greatest punishment is 
due to the greatest sin, and to no other. 

But the greatest actual sin is not of course the greatest poS' 
sihle. The greatest possible punishment has not yet, perhaps, 
been deserved by any creature. And we do not know that it 
ever will be. For, to omnipotence, infinite punishment is pos- 

1 It is refreshing to find this theodicy stated with its consistent results. Thus 
Lebnitz tells us, Th^odic^e, § 11: " The Cardinal (Sfondrate) appears to prefer 
the state of infants dying without baptism, even to the kingdom of heaven, be- 
cause sin is the greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin;'' 
— Twisse, Vindicise, 1. 2, pars 1, § 5, digressio 1. p. 17: " To be a sinner is worse 
than to be condemned to the punishments of hell, according to Arminius ; be- 
cause, he says, ' that is opposed to a divine good, this to a human.' Wherefore 
it is better to be pious, and at the same time to be damned, than to be without 
pigty and without penalty;" — Bayle, E'^lponse aux Questions, Part. I. c. 82: 
" Toutes les bons casuistes se recrieront contre M. Kmg, qui croit que le mal 
physique est un plus grand mal que le pdch^." 



SIN AS THE GREATEST EVIL. 



97 



sible ; and the theory thus appears as an indefinite re-statement 
of the infinite ill-desert of sin. 

2. If it is meant that sin is the worst hind of evil, we grant 
it. But what follows ? • Simply this, that it should be treated 
with the worst kind of pain, — that is, it should be punished. 
For punishment is the worst kind of pain. Many natural evi],-. 
such as the wayward temper of brutes and of children, must be 
corrected with pain that is not punishment. Chastening is 
tinged with penalty, as a correction of moral defect in those who 
are radically good. But retribution is incomparably worse. Ii 
is infliction matured in remorse. Pain assumes its most intoler- 
able form, when it smites the conscience. " The spirit of a man 
sustaineth his infirmity ; but a wounded spirit who can bear ? " 

The argument turns on the comparison between natural and 
moral evil, and assumes that moral evil is the greater. We cer- 
tainly do not believe that it is the less. But whether it is the 
greater, or whether the two kinds of evil are at aU commensur- 
able, is a question. The subversion of Lisbon by an earthquake, 
with the crushing out of 60,000 lives, was a natural evil ; the 
malice of a child toward a playmate, is a moral evil ; which is 
the greater ? Doubtless the malice would be wrong, though it 
should prevent the earthquake. And the seeming paradox may 
be explained by the fact that sin and pain are not to be compared 
in magnitude ; as a pound is not really heavier than a league, 
for the same reason that the league is not longer than the pound. 
Even in the conscience they are, perhaps, not comparable as sin 
and pain ; for literal or physical pain is not remorse, and there 
is remorse without infliction. On the other hand, our moral phi- 
losophy has not yet explained the relation of happiness to duty ; 
whence not a few are ready to say that moral evil is such only 
because it produces or threatens natural evil. 
. 3. If the theodicy contemplates the loss of the soul and of 
eternal life, as the greatest evil, then the inference of endless 
misery as the punishment of sin involves certain difiiculties that 
are easily made apparent. 

(1.) Endless misery can not be that the incurring of which 
first makes sin the greatest evil ; fpr that would be an assump- 
9 



98 



THE THEODICIES. 



tion of the thing to be proved.^ The argument must begin on 
lower ground ; i. e., it must take the loss of eternal life in the 
literal sense, as the greatest evil to which man was originally 
exposed. 

But sin as against one's own soul would then be punished with 
an infinite loss ; that which makes sin the greatest evil being in 
itself the greatest punishment. 

(2.) If it be said that those \v]io lead, others to destruction are 
not fully punished in their own loss of eternal happiness, but 
they should also suffer eternal misery, — then we have the lost 
divided into two classes, and only a part of them should be im- 
mortalized for punishment. But by parity of reasoning, if eternal 
misery were the original penalty, those who lead others to sin 
should suffer a two-fold, or a manifold eternal misery. And 
since many may be guilty in common of the ruin of one soul, 
that should be avenged with as many eternities of woe. Plence 
we see that the difficulty is not that of our view alone, but of 
every case of aggravated wickedness. The only solution of the 
difficulty is found in the principle already stated, that guilt is 
measured, not by the amount of good destroyed or evil done, but 
by the capacity and malignity of the transgressor. 

It is proper here to remark, that, in any view of the divine 
penalty, the division of the lost into the two classes of murderers 
and murdered, and the punishment of the former by multiples of 
the original penalty, would extol the power of Evil. For the 
multiples of guilt would outnumber the souls destroyed, ten 
thousand fold, or rather infinitely, if we consider how closely 
each human being is bound to miUions of others ; how every 
man is a brother's keeper to he knows not how many ; and if 
we then apply the law of geometrical progression which is in- 
volved, the principle of retribution in question would burden the 
divine side of the equation between sin and penalty, and give to 

1 This petitio principii is thus made by Crousaz, forgetting his usual good 
sense, Examen du Pyrrhonisme, p. 569: "It would be further necessary [in 
order to determine the proper penalty of sin] to be able to know the whole 
chain of its consequences, the great number of evils which it causes in life, and 
the dangers to which it exposes others after death." 



SCIENTIA MEDIA DEI. 



99 



the Adversary a kingdom extended beyond measure, like the 
magic range of figures in the kaleidoscope. 

§ 11. SCIENTIA MEDIA DEI. 

The hypothetical knowledge of God, or His fore-knowledge 
of what the sinner would do in a certain case, has been employed 
in a theodicy analogous to the in suo infmito, and which might 
be called the in sua ceternitate. It is thus stated by a famous 
divine of the sixth century : " It belongs to the Divine Justice 
that they should never be without punishment who in this life 
wished never to be without sin."^ "It is objected that a sin 
that has had an end should not be punished endlessl3\ The 
omnipotent God is just, forsooth, and what Avas not of eternal 
perpetration should not be punished with eternal torment. It 
might be so, if the just and rigorous Judge, at his coming, should 
weigh the deeds of men, and not their hearts. But the workers 
of iniquity have ceased to sin, simply because they have ceased 
to live ; since they would have been glad to live for ever that 
they might for ever sin. For they desire more to sin than to 
live, and wish to live alway, just in order that they may sin 
alway. Therefore, as God is just, they should never w^ant for 
penalty, in whose heart it was in this life never to want for sin ; 
and no limit of retribution is due to him who desired no limit of 
his guilt. ^ 

In other words, the sinner devotes an eternal existence to sin 

1 Gregory the Great, Dialogi, 1. 4, c. 44. 

2 Idem, Moralia, 1. 34, c. 19. Compare Aquinas, Summa TlieoL Pars III. 
q. 99, prop. 1; — Drexel, De J^ternitate, 1. 2, c. 15: — Fulgentius, De Remiss. 
Peccat., 1. 2, c. 21 ; — Pellicanus, Comm. in 2 Thes. i. 9; — Poole, Amiot. 2 Thes. 
1. 9, and Synopsis Crit. Matt. xxv. 46: " They sinned in their eternity, and 
■will be pmilshed in God's eternity;" — Lucas Brugensis, in Matt. xxv. 46: "Ea 
est peccatoris voluntas, ut ceten-iumpeccaret si posset ;"-Troschel, Demonstratio 
33ter. peccat. damnat., Hal. 1757 : — Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, p. 417, note.' 
May not the theory be also deduced from the expression of D. N. Lord, Theol. 
and Lit. Journal, July 1854, p. 65 : " If they [those who die young] continue 
hi revolt, it is essential, in order to the vindication of God's justice in their ever- 
lasting punishment, that they should display the most decisive proofs that they 
are his enemies? " 



Lorc. 



100 



TDE THEODICIES. 



in reversion, and is guilty infinitely by anticipation. It is not 
essential to this theodicy that the sinner should be naturally im- 
mortal. If destruction were the original penalty of sin, it is 
overruled by the necessity of eternal being, in which to punish 
the desire of immortal guilt. The theory also assumes that the 
sinner would not, through eternity, change his purpose, though 
he had the power to do so. We reply : 

1. This , assumption, by which man arrogates to himself the 
divine knowledge of what the sinner would do, must be proven. 
Otherwise the theory is reduced to the consideration of the guilt 
of the sinner in this life, in hazarding an eternal sinfulness, and 
is the same with the in suo i'njinito already answered. 

2. But this eternal sinfulness supposes an absolute immortality, 
an injinitum which is the sinner's own ; which is the thing to be 
proved. Or if it is said his guilt consists in the forfeiture of 
immortality, then eternal suffering includes the recovery of the 
forfeit, which is absurd. ■'• 

3. Tlie eternal suffering is either attended with eternal sinful- 
ness, or it is not. In the one case, the sinner overreaches God, 
acquiring the power to sin against Him for ever, because he has 
been willing to do so. In the other case, there is eternal pun- 
ishment for sin never committed. 

The theory is, happily, nearly out of date. Its atrocity be- 
longs to the mind of Hildebrand who matured it, and to the 
darkening age in which he lived. But besides its mournful his- 
toric value, it is only too similar to theodicies still in vogue. 
And even in modern times it is applied to the race of man as 
fallen in Adam, and we are told that each human being is 
involved in the consequences of the first sin because God foresaw 
that he would have committed the same if he had stood in Adam's 
place. But it follows even from the representations of some who 
hold this view, that the Redemption was due to the condemned 
race. ^ 

1 Yet Augustine approaches such a statement, De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, c. 12: 
" Quanto euim magis homo fruebatur Deo, tanto majore impietate dereliquit 
Deum, et factus est malo dignus asterno, qui hoc in se peremit bonum, quod 
»sse posset oeternum." Here also the rejected gift of God is charged as a debt. 

2 See Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 374, 375. 



FREE WILL. 



101 



§ 12. FREE WILL. 

The free agency of man, one of the essential conditions of all 
theodicy, is sometimes relied on as constituting a theodicy in 
Itself. Thus the greatest of the Fathers says of eternal suffering : 
" Whoever thinks such a condemnation either unduly severe, or 
unjust, surely has not estimated the guilt of sinning when it was so 
easy not to sin. For, as a signal merit of obedience is ascribed to 
Abraham because so hard a duty was laid upon him as the slay- 
ing of his son, — so in Paradise the disobedience was as much 
greater as the duty required was less difficult. And as the obe- 
dience of the second Adam was the worthier because it was unto 
death, so the disobedience of the first Adam was more detestable 
because it was unto death. For when the threatened penalty of 
disobedience is great, and the requirement of our Maker is easy, 
who can tell how great a sin it is not to obey in so easy a matter, 
and in aw^e of so high an authority and so dreadful a doom ? " ^ 

We think the theory thus stated merits the name we have 
given it, because the facility of obedience is the perfection of 
freedom. So far as the theory relies on the vastness of the 
motive to obedience, it becomes another theodicy, to be examined 
presently. 

This theory is refuted by its consequences. By parity of 
reasoning the least sin might be visited with the heaviest penalty, 
because the sin was voluntary. The child need not steal a pin ; 
the petty theft may require more effort than to desist from it. 
Why should the child complain of penalty at all ? And if not at 
all, why complain of any penalty, though it be infinite ? Indeed 
the theodicy sometimes takes this form, — the more trivial the 

lAiagustine, De Civ. Dei, 1. 14, c. 15. Compare Willard, Lectures on the 
Catechism, q. 19; " There is a covenant merit. It is the wages for sin accord- 
ing to the indentiires which were made between God and man. Rom. vi. 23: 
' The wages of sin is death.' The word signifies a stipend, or something that is 
agi'eed for. . . . The sinner hath no cause to complain, because he knew 
what he had to stand to; " — J. Scott, Christian Life, Part IlL c. 9; — Crousaz 
Examen du Pyrrhonisme, Part IIL c. 2, § 22 ; c. 13, §§ 7, 25, 34, 33, 52 ;— Bledsoe, 
Theodicy, p. 302 ; — Hinton, Harmony of Eeligious Truth, pp. 208, 209. 
9* 



102^ 



THE THEODICIES. 



duty God requires, the more excuseless the refusal to perform it, 
and the greater may be the penalty. 

The fallacy is that which we have already, indicated : a mis- 
take of the condition of guilt for the producing cause of guilt. 
It is as if one should say an infinite penalty of law is just because 
the subject knows it to be the penalty. The knowledge of law 
and its penalty is an essential condition of its binding force ; but 
the publication of a law assuredly does not make it just. Neither 
docs the most perfect power to obey it, or to escape its penalty. 

§ 13. THE CHOICE OF TWO INFINITIES. 

The theory just considered is often supplemented by the con- 
sideration of eternal happiness and misery as offset against each 
other, and offered to man's choice. Thus a living writer, speak- 
ing of man as free, and a necessary holiness as impossible : " It 
was the bright and cheering light which this truth seemed to cast 
upon the dark places of the universe, that first inspired us with 
the thought and determination to produce a theodicy. And it is 
in the light of this truth, if we mistake not, that the infinite love 
of God may be seen beaming from the eye of hell, as well as 
from the bright regions of eternal blessedness. . . . All that 
could be done in such a case was, for God to set life and death 
before us, accompanied by the greatest of all conceivable motives 
to pursue the one, and to fly from the other ; and then say 
' choose ye and all this God has actually done for the salvation 
of all men. Hence, though some should be finally lost, His infi- 
nite goodness will be clear." ^ 

1 Bledsoe, Theodicy, pp. 302, 303. Compare J. Clarke, Origin of Moral Evil, 
Boyle Lecture Sermons, III., 275 ; — Baxter, Unreasonableness of Infidelity, 
§ 31 ; — Bp. Newton, Dissei'tations, No, 60: " You cannot complain of injustice, 
for the rewards and punishments are equal; " — Bates, Immort. of Soul, c. 12: 
" Eternal life and death ai-e set before them. ... So that none dies but for 
wilful disobedience ;" — Harris, Man Primeval, p. 177: "Now the same consti- 
tution which renders man capable of hoping, renders him capable of fearing to 
the same extent. But if it was never Intended that such fear should be realized 
in the event of disobedience, here is the anomaly of a part of the human consti- 
tution to which there is nothing whatever in the objective and the future to 
correspond." 



CHOICE OF t*ENALTIES. 



103 



This theodicy is closely connected with the common nofion of 
human dignity ; and in this view it is, we think, already refuted. 
As an argument for the divine justice, we may reply to it in the 
words of Tillotson. After dismissing several theories, he says : 
"Here are two things which seem to bid fairly towards an 
answer. First, that the reward which God promiseth to our 
obedience is equal to the punishment which he threatens to our 
disobedience. But yet this, I doubt, will not reach the business ; 
because though it be not contrary to justice to exceed in rewards, 
that being matter of mere favor, yet it may be so, to exceed in 
punishments. Secondly, it is further said, that the sinner in this 
case hath nothing to complain of, since he hath his own choice. 
This I confess is enough to silence the sinner, and to make him 
acknowledge that his destruction is of himself ; but yet for all 
that it does not seem so clearly to satisfy the objection from the 
disproportion between the fault and the punishment." ^ 

The theodicy fails, besides being dualistic in its very form. 
When it is asked why God should propose to man the choice of 
two infinities, the answer brings us to another form of the theory. 

§ 14. CHOICE OF PENALTIES. 

Meanwhile we may notice a theodicy similar to the last, which 
seems to have been that of Baxter. He says : " I would ask 
you, do you not know that you and all men must die ? and would 
you not be contented to suffer a terrible degree of misery ever- 
lastingly, rather than die ? Whatsoever men may say, it is 
certain they would. Though not to live to us is better than to 
live in hell, yet men would live in very great misery, rather than 
not live at all, if they had their choice. We see men that have 
lived, some in extreme poverty, some in great pain, for many 
years, that yet had rather continue in it than die. If, then, be 
so great a misery to be turned again into nothing, that you would 
rather suffer everlasting pain in some measure, methinks you can 
discover a probability that God's word should be true, which 



1 Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46. 



104 THE TIIEODICIES. 

threatens yet a greater pain ; for is it not likely that the judge 
will inflict more than the prisoner will choose or submit to ? " 

The statement is, doubtless, too general ; only the nobler sort 
of men have spoken of eternal pain as better than the loss of 
being ; and that inconsiderately, though sincerely. 

The argument divides the eternal misery of the lost into two 
portions, — that highest measure which they would prefer to non- 
existence, and the overplus which they would not prefer, but 
which justice may inflict. It will readily appear that this over- 
plus alone can be penalty ; the rest can hardly be vindicated as 
just — much less as penal. 

For, why would so great a degree of eternal misery be pre- 
ferred to annihilation ? Certainly because immortality would be 
an honor and a blessing, in the pleasures of intellect at least, 
though not in the enjoyments of sense. 

"For who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
These thoughts that wander through eternity 1 " 

They would be the solace and comfort that are to make the 
suffering preferable to annihilation. Without them who would 
not lose his being? But they would be a gift of God's eternal 
goodness. And the attendant suffering which they are supposed 
to vindicate, would be a charge made for the gratuity. The 
pleasure would be no longer a grace of God, and the pain no 
longer of his justice. 

§ lO. INFINITE MOTIVES. 

Salvation is too valuable to be exposed to any hazard of loss. 
Hence a very prevalent sentiment which has been expressed as 

1 The Unreasonableness of Infidelity, Part I. Works, xx. 31, Lond. 1830. 
Compare Twisse, Vindicise, 1. 2, pars 1, § 5, p. 17: "Not only according to the 
Schoolmen, but to Augustine also [De Lib. Arbit. 1. 3, cc. 6-8], even accord- 
ing to the truth itself, it is more desirable to be, though in any pain whatever, 
than not to be at all ; " — Dr. Gordon, Hall's Memoir, p. 95, ed. Pres. Board: 
" So dreadful do I think annihilation, that I would rather live in pain than not 
live at all: " — Athenagoras, I. Taylor, and E. Williams, as above, p. 13; — Wal- 
ker, Philosophy of Scepticism, pp. 151-153, states the common view that hell is 
appointed "in mercy" to the lost, because heaven would be less congenial. 



INFINITE MOTIVES. 



105 



follows : " There can be no kindness felt for the impenitent, in 
wishing any less influence to come upon them in their sins, to 
urge them to enter immediately upon that course in which their 
highest happiness lies, than what arises from the existence of an 
endless penalty. Nor can any kindness be felt for the penitent 
and pious on earth, in wishing any less influence to come upon 
them to bind them firmly and immovably to their Saviour, than 
what arises from the threatening of an endless penalty in case 
they apostatize. The desire of Universalists cannot be to have 
any motives addressed to men for carrying on the work of refor- 
mation on earth, higher and stronger than what arise from the 
doctrine they reject. . . . And as to God, they must ac- 
knowledge that He regards the holiness of his subjects as involv- 
ing their highest good ; and that He is pursuing this object in 
the demands and threatenings of his government. Consequently 
there can be no kindness and respect felt for his character, in 
wishing any motive lessened which is to secure the obedience 
and veneration of his subjects." ^ With this should be compared 
a translation of one of the early Fathers : " Allowing our tenets 
to be as false and groundless presumptions as you would have 
them, yet I must tell you they are presumptions the world can- 
not well be without. If they are follies, they are follies of great 
use, because the believers of them, what under the dread of 
eternal pain, and the hope of everlasting pleasure, are under the 
strongest obligations to become the best of men." ^ 

It is a frequent cavil of the sceptic that the Christian practices 
virtue for the hope of an eternal reward, for the fear of an 
eternal pain, or for both reasons ; not at all for the love of virtue. 

1 Fitch, Review of Tyler on Fut. Pun., dir. Spectator, Dec. 1829. 

^Tertullian, Apology, c. 49, Reeves' ti-anslation. (But the context makes 
the argument to be this, that the utility of a doctrine is prima facie evidence of 
its truth.) Compare Bp. Burnet, Deraonstr. of True Religion, Boyle Lecture 
Sermons, III. 494, 495 : " Therefore the right and just proportion of punishment 
to be annexed to laws is not to be measured by the nature of sin; " — Bates, 
Immort. of the Soul, c. 12; — Maud, The Tremendous Sanction, c. 3, § 6; — 
Watson, Theol. Instt. Part II. c. 19 ; — Hinton, Harmony of Religious Truth, pp. 
203, sq. 206 ;— Walker, Philosophy of Scepticism, pp. 147, 148. 



106 



THE THEODICIES. 



Tlie cavil is certainly not silenced by this theodicy. In one of 
the above statements its principle is identical with that of the 
pious fraud ; and we need not wonder that an eminent writer, 
after having said that penalty is a matter of prudence in the law- 
giver, in which justice is not concerned, should add, that " after 
all, He that threatens hath still the power of execution in his own 
hands ; " and should intimate that the threatening may be de- 
signed for effect and not for execution.-'- 

And too consistently. For the argument sets out from the 
divine goodness, and deduces elernal suffering in behalf of 
human salvation. But for whose benefit, and when for their 
benefit ? Certainly not for the lost ; it can do them no good. 
Nor for the saved ; the threatening is supposed to have accom- 
plished its work for them. It is good only for the living ; its 
blessing ceases with death. Its justice must then be made out, 
no longer from the goodness of God, but from his veracity. 

In the last resort, then, the theodicy fails, since even the 
veracity of God can not bind him to what is not intrinsically 
just. But it fails primarily, for another reason. The threaten- 
ing itself is not due to the welfare of men. They have no claim 
on God for an infinite inducement to be saved. Even the 
glorious attractions of eternal bliss are a gift of His goodness. 
Much more would be a second infinite motive, in the terror of an 
endless misery. That new encouragement would be an unmerited 
favor, an undeserved blessing, a free donative of God. Hence, 
perhaps, we may understand why it has been granted to some 
nations of men, and not to others ; and hence the missionary 
appeal in behalf of this gospel. But if the threatening is itself 
a gratuity, the execution of it is also a gratuity ; and we must 
conclude that damnation, no less than salvation, is of divine 
grace. 

The weakness and poverty of man, which appears in his in- 
sensibility to the motive of eternal happiness, of course gives 
him no claim to the other motive. If he needs it, this is his guilt 



1 Tillotson, Sermon on Matt. xxv. 46. Compare Less, Dogmatik, p. 587. 



i 



THE REDEMPTION. 



107 



anJ not liis merit. And if it ^yere not the token of man's ill- 
desert, it would be an impeachment of God's power or wisdom, 
and an argument of his infinite necessity. 

§ 16. THE REDEMPTION. 

To vindicate God's justice, the heaviest drafts have been made 
i upon His grace in that most signal act which should be most 
j sacredly guarded from such violation. The subsidizing of the 
Redemption as something due to the human race, is found in its 
mildest form in Watson. Speaking of an objection against the 
I imputation of Adam's sin, he says, it " springs from regarding 
the legal part of the whole transaction which affected our first 
parents and their posterity separately from the evangelical 'pro- 
vision of unercy which ivas concurrent with it, and which included, 
in like manner, both them and their whole race. . . . The 
redemption of men by Christ was not certainly an after-thought, 
brought in upon man's apostasy ; it was a provision, and when 
man fell, he found justice hand-in-hand with mercy." Again : 
I " Had no method of forgiveness and restoration been established 
with respect to human offenders, the penalty of death must have 
been forthwith executed upon them ; . . . and with them, 
and in them, the human race must have utterly perished." ■* 

We call this a mild statement of the theodicy, because it was 
connected with the question respecting the case of those dying 
in infancy; and in itself it includes an optimist consideration, 
which is foreign to the point at issue. It seems to concede, 
|i however, that without a Redemption, the sin of our first parents 
would have involved no eternal misery. A later statement is 
1 more significant. " We are not told," says Bledsoe, " and we 
do not know, what it would have been consistent with the justice 
of God to do in relation to the world, if there had been no remedy 
provided for its restoration. Perhaps it might never have been 
created at all. ... We do not know that even the justice 
of God would have created man, and permitted him to fall, wan- 

1 Theol. Instit. Part II. cc. 18, 19. 



I 



108 



THE THEODICIES. 



dering everlastingly amid the horrors of death, without hope and 
without remedy. We find nothing of the kind in the word of 
God, and in our nature it meets with no response except a wail 
of unutterable horror."^ 

We reply, this is the precise question of all theodicy, — What 
is the just penalty of God's law, without respect to His grace ? 
and of course we must ask what " would have been," and what 
"might be;" it is not enough to know "what is." Is the im- 
pending penalty incurred simply by transgression of the Law, or 
by rejection of the Grace ? To say that it is incurred, but that we 
do not know if it was due without the grace, is to say that we 
do not know justice from injustice, and that a theodicy is im- 
possible. 

The Redemption is so intimately connected with the other 
doctrines of the Christian system, that it is easy to miss the 
point on which the draft thereupon turns. Let us grant, then, 
that the human race was continued, after the sin of Adam, 
because salvation was still possible by a method of grace ; that 
the sin of Adam was not imputed as guilt to his posterity, but 
that the final displeasure of God is incurred only by personal 
disobedience; i. e. by actual sin, and not by birth sin. The 
question still remains : Would Adam, or any other human being, 
suffer eternal misery, if there were no forgiveness in the name 
of a Kedeemer ? And the theodicy in hand consists in offering 
the work of Christ as a vindication of God's justice, if any at 
last suffer for ever. The complexion of it appears in the follow- 
ing remark upon the difficulties set forth in the " Conflict of 
Ages." " Must the great compensatory fact which shall har- 
monize these conflicting elements be sought in either a past or a 
future state of being? May it not be in the present? Is it 
not furnished in the great fact of Redemption, or an economy 
of grace and recovery co-extensive with the facts of sin and 
depravity ? . . . Not that all men will infallibly be saved, 
but that salvation is for all, and possible to all ; that the plan of 
Redemption is designed for and includes the whole race in its 



1 Theodicy, p. 254. 



THE REDEMP' ION. 



109 



design and end and provisions ; and that none will now be lost 
but those who will not be saved. ^ 

This theodicy is very prominent in the history of Theology. 
It is not confined to Arminian divines, to whom it has been 
most attributed in the defense of Calvinism as trul} asserting 
the doctrines of grace; but many who decline the Arminian 
system have embraced it. It is also involved in the opinion 
so often avowed, that the immortality of all men is the gift of 
Christ, without whom the being of man would have utterly 
perished. 

Its absurdity is easily illustrated. It is as if a person charged 
with crime and condemned for it, should be offered a pardon ; 
refusing which, his sentence is executed, not on the ground of 
his original guilt, but for the new crime of rejecting the pardon. 
Or as if a prisoner should be permitted to escape if he wished, 
and then be told his condemnation would be unjust if he had no 
such opportunity. Eternal life is offered a second time to those 
who have once proved unworthy of it ; and they are then told 
that for their original rebellion they did not deserve death ; but 
if they now choose to die, they merit endless woe. In this view 
the theory is identical with that which gives man the choice of 
infinite good and evil, with this difference : the one condemns 
for the first wrong choice, the other for a second wrong choice. 
In either case the free gift is charged as an infinite debt. 

In another view the theodicy is unspeakably dreadful. It 
follows, that it would have been infinitely better for fallen man 
if justice had taken its course. He might then have only died; 
but the offer of rescue exposes him to the danger of eternal 
misery. In other words, he is punished infinitely worse by the 
grace of God than he would have been by his justice ! 

But it is asked : Is not man's guilt aggravated by the rejection 

1 Compare Jer. Taylor, On Original Sin; — Abp. King, On the Fall of Man; 
— Le Clerc, Bibliot. Choisie, VII., 340, 341; (see Bayle, Reponse aux Questions, 
Part II. c. 173); — Schaff, Die Siinde wider d. h. Geist, p. 159: " Their absolute 
impotence and unhappiness gives the most striking proof that there is no other 
way to blessedness than that offered through faith in Christ;" — Hinton, Har- 
mony of Religious Truth, p. 208 ; ~ Geo. Payne, LL.D., Congregational Lecture, 
Of Original Sin, pp. 109, 110. 

10 



110 



THE THEODICIES. 



of an offered Savior? Undoubtedly. Man can not despise 
divine goodness and long-suffering without treasuring up wrath 
against the day of wrath. But this is something infinitely differ- 
ent from the free grace of God justifying endless penal suffering. 
If that is not merited by man's original guilt, it can not be 
merited by ten thousand aggravations of it. In no period less 
than eternity can finite guilt be heaped up to infinity. 

The practical bearings of the theodicy should be noted. The 
gratuitous natui-e of the Kedemption lies at the foundation of the 
religion of a fallen race. It may have been " provided " in the 
counsels of eternity, — it is still gratuitous ; the advancing ages 
have not made it fall due. It may be true that God would not 
be just to himself, if He were not more than just to us ; still 
his infinite goodness is nothing that we can claim. And there 
can be no " compensation " for severe penalties incurred in the 
administration of Him who is eternally just. But if the Re- 
demption was a vindication of his justice, man may withhold his 
confession of moral bankruptcy, and forbear thanksgiving for 
divine mercy and grace. 

Hence a living writer, equally profound and devout, has 
truly remarked, " how cautiously the remark often heard in our 
time, — the true Theodicee is the Redemption, — is to be con- 
ceived of, if it is not to lead to a great error, radically perverting 
the Christian scheme of salvation. If the plan of Redemption 
is essentially an act of the righteousness of God, it had been 
unjust, and a violation of a claim justifiable on the part of man, 
to leave him without redemption. But it can only so appear to 
him who denies that man is himself guilty in his sins and their 
consequences."^ 

1 Compare Crousaz, Examen du Pyrrhonisme, Part III. c. 13, § 6. 

2 Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 269. The theodicy is canvassed by Coleridge 
at length, in the following passage, which is equally pertinent and eloquent: 

Whatever else the descendants of Adam might have been without the inter- 
cession of Christ, yet (this intercession having been effectually made), they are 
now endowed with souls that are not extinguished together with the material 
body. Kow unless these divines teach likewise the Piomish figment of Purga- 
tory, and to an extent in which the Church of Rome herself would denounce 
the doctrine as an impious heresy; unless they hold that a punishment tempo- 



PRE-EXISTENCE. Ill 
§ 17. PRE-EXISTENCE. 

We need not press any of the objections which hove been ^o 
rife against the theodicy offered in the " Conflict of Ages." The 
doctrine of man's preexistence has a history which may yet com- 
mand respect,^ though we think it has not been relied upon as a 
vindication of the eternity of future suffering until recently. As 
an ancient theodicy it had reference simply to the evils of man's 
present state. 

raiy and remedial is the worst evil that the impenitent have to apprehend in a 
future state ; and that the spiritual death declared and foretold by Christ, ' the 
death eternal where the worm never dies,' is neither death nor eternal, bi;t a 
certain quantum of suffering in a state of faith, hope, and progressive amend- 
ment, — unless they go these lengths, (and the divines here intended are orthodox 
Churchmen, men who would not knowingly advance even a step on the road 
towards them) — then I fear, that any advantage their theory might possess 
over the Calvinistic scheme in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly pur- 
chased by increased difficulties and an ultra-Calvinistic narrowness in the article 
of Redemption. I at least find it impossible, with my present human feelings, 
not to imagine otherwise, than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing 
to know, that in order to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desirable than by 
nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had been rendered 
infinitely more calamitous ; and that my felicity had been purchased by the 
everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men, who, if no Redemption 
had been provided, after inheriting the pains and pleasures of earthly existence 
during the numbered hours, and the few and evil — evil x^t few — days of the 
years of their mortal life, would have fallen asleep to wake no more, would 
have sunk into the dreamless sleep of the grave, and have been as the murmui', 
and the plaint, and the exulting swell, and the sharp scream, which the unequal 
gust of yesterday snatched from the strings of a wind-hai-p ! " — Aids to Reflec- 
tion, 1st Am. ed. p. 332. 

1 Aside from its eastern and more ancient history it has been held by Philo 
JudiEUS, 0pp. I. 416 ; II. 37, ed. ]\Iangey ; — Plotinus, Ennead. 4, 11. 7, 8 ; - 
Origen, Com. in Joh. t. 2, cc. 24, 25 ; 1. 13, c. 43 : — Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. c. 2 ; - 
Synesius, De Providentia, § 1 ; De Insomniis, Ep. 67 ; — Augustine, doubtingly, 
De Lib. Arb. 1. 3, cc. 20, 21; — De Genes, ad. ht. 1. 7, c. 24; — Jerome, Epp. ad 
MarcelL, Anapsych. et Demetriad. ; — Basil, In Hexaemeron, Homil. 8, c. 2; — 
Cardan, Theognoston, 1. 8, De Animi Immort. cc. 3,29,58; — Henry More, who 
cites Galen, Hippocrates, and many others. Immortality of the Soul, b. 2, cc. 
12, 13;— The author of "Two Hundred Queries," Lond. 1684 (see Bayle, 
(Euvres, I. 55) ; — Jenyns, Origin of Evil, Pref. and Let. 3 ; — Sir H. Davy, Con- 
solations of Travel, Dialog. 4; — Lessin;;, Education of the Human Race (see 
Hedge's German Prose Writers, p. 95); — Beneke, Brief an die Riimer (see 
Mohler, SymboHsm, b. 1, c. 3, § 15); — Miiller, Chi-. Doc. of Sin, H. 77, 166, 
40C, 440, a " timeless " preexistence ; — Capel Barrow, Theol. Diss., Lond. 1772. 



112 



THE THEODICIES. 



The sentiment which underhes the argument of the " Conflict 
of Ages," appears in the following expression: "In this wide 
universe no thought is so affecting as to exist for eternity, and to 
be called on, in a relatively brief space of time, to decide the 
character of that eternity" (p. 481). This life, so short and so 
full of weakness and ignorance and trouble, seems an unequal 
probation for an immortal destiny ; and it is held that each mem- 
ber of the human race has deserved eternal suffering, by deliber- 
ate transgression, in a probation with the best advantages, con- 
tinued for we know not how long a period. Men are supposed 
to have been not unlike the angels in their first estate, but more 
fi^vored than the fallen angels in the grant of a new trial for the 
eternal state. 

The value of the theodicy turns on the value of the supposed 
original probation. Were its advantages such that it might justly 
decide and fix a character for eternity ? Now the very idea of 
a new trial suggests that those advantages were not such as to 
determine an unalterable character ; or at least, that if the for- 
mation of an immutable character was then possible, it did not 
become /ac^ in the case of the present human beings. For if so, 
why are we here ? Just as a new trial of one charged with 
crime supposes a remaining doubt in the question of his guilt, so 
a new probation of beings once fallen assumes that they were 
not fallen beyond hope of recovery. They v^ere not utterly des- 
perate and callous against all good influences. They were not 
immutably wicked. Their sin had not the quality of eternal 
endurance. The abused privileges of the previous state might, 
indeed, advance one far towards a just condemnation as hope- 
lessly and helplessly depraved, as certain to sin on eternally in 
spite of all that God could do to change his purpose. But pro- 
gress toward this state, and the actual attainment of it, are differ- 
ent things, and they may be infinitely different. 

The theodicy fails, therefore, upon the face of it, to vindicate 
eternal suffering for the immutability of a preexistent sinfulness ; 
it assumes the contrary. Can it rely, then, upon the heinoiisness 
of the sins of a previous state ? This would be a resort to one 
or other of the theories already examined ; and it is plain no 



I 



ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 



113 



theory of infinite lieinousness is tenable, until it appears that the 
sinner is an infinite and divine being. 

Is the supposed condemnation justified, then, by the number, 
or the long continuance, of sins in the previous state? The 
answer is, no finite or temporary sinfulness can merit eternal 
suffering. An indefinite, unmeasured, immense duration of guilt 
still falls infinitely short of infinity. If the sins of one year, or 
of three score years and ten, deserve not eternal misery, then no 
multiple of them, and no mere aggravation of them, can justify it. 
The sins of an eternal preexistence alone can justify it. 

The theory may be illustrated architecturally. It is proposed 
to support an inflexible beam, projecting infinitely. For this, it 
must have limitless strength of material. No brace work is 
allowed; but it is either inserted in a mortice work of eternal 
adamant ; or it is balanced by an infinite superincumbent weight; 
or by a projection infinitely in the opposite direction. Either of 
these things, changeless character, infinite guilt, or guilt from 
eternity, are supposable only 

" If onr substance be indeed divine, 
And cannot cease to be." 

§ 18. ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 

But the notion of a sinful character that shall never in fact be 
changed is a distinct theodicy; or rather it gives rise to two, 
according as the character is supposed to be ever voluntary, or 
to become a destiny. The first is thus stated by Dwight : " God 
may punish sin so long as it exists. He who sins through this 
life may evidently sin through another such period ; and another, 
and another, without end. That, while we continue to sin, God 
may justly punish us, if he can justly punish at all, is equally 
e V ident. . . . The Scriptures teach us that sinners who die 
in impenitence will not cease to sin throughout eternity. The 
supposition that their sufferings in the future world will be com- 
plete, involves in it as a consequence, that they will continue to 
sin. If they were to become penitent and virtuous, i\iej would 
of course possess many enjoyments, and those of a xery impor- 
10* 



114 



THE THEODICIES. 



tant nature." ^ The element of freedom is more distinctly stated 
by Olshausen : " The punishment here spoken of is not arbitrary 
or positive ; the punishment of lovelessness is association with 
the loveless alone, in that state of discord in the external as well 
as the internal life, which constantly proceeds from the absence 
of love." ^ And by Nitzsch : " The idea of eternal damnation 
and punishment is so far a necessary one, inasmuch as there can 
not be in eternity any forced holiness of the personal being, or 
any blessed unholiness." ^ Its advantages are urged by Chalm- 
ers: "We hold that it would purge theology of many of its 
errors, and that it would guide and enlighten the practical Chris- 
tianity of many honest enquirers, if the moral character both of 
heaven and hell were more distinctly recognized, and held a 
more prominent place in the regards and contemplations of 
men."^ 

This theodicy is founded on the distinction between natural 
inability and moral inability, as it is made by theologians of 
the new school. When the unconverted sinner pleads that he 
can not repent, it is held, and we think truly, that his supposed 
disability is a deep-seated disinclination, a will not, for which he 
is at the moment accountable ; and his utter dependence on God 
for help leaves it still his duty to help himself. And it is now 
argued that this moral inability will form the eternal character 
of the lost, without passing into a natural inability. Consistently 

1 Theology, Sermon clxvii. 2 Comm. on Matt. xxv. 46. 

3 Christian Doctrine, § 219. 

4 Sermon, Heaven a character and not a locality, Eev. xxii. 11. Compare 
Lactantius, De Ira Dei, c. 21 : " Ira divina in jetemum manet adversus eos, qui 
peccant in seternum." He presently says: "Qui peccare desinit, iram dei 
mortalem facit;" but the sentiment seems limited to this life, and the theodicy 
may be the "in sua reternitate ;" — Leibnitz, Theodicee, 133, 2G6, 269: 
" Apres cette vie, . . . il y'a toujours dans Thomme qui peche, lors meme 
qu'il est damne, une liberty qui le rend coupable, et une puissance, mais eloi- 
gnee, de se relever; " — Werdermann(Restor.), Theodicee, L 163-165 ; — Secr6- 
tan (Restor.), La Philosophic de la Liberty, p. 330: "L' enfer et le paradis 
reposent sur la liberte; " — Gerhard, Loci Theol., de Infer. § 60; — Charnock. 
Disc, on Providence; — Watts, World to Come, Disc. XIII. § 1 ; — Edwards the 
Younger, Wks. I. 112 ; — Woods, Works, III. 285 - 288 ; — Lacoudre, Theodicea, 
II. 314; — Coquerel (Restor.), Christianity, p. 413, tr. by Davidson; Hamilton, 
Rewards and Punishments, pp. 426, 427, 429. 



ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 



115 



with this view, the " eternal condemnation " is sometimes repre- 
sented as being not "thetical" or positive and absolute, but 
hypothetical or conditional ; actual, not by virtue of any irrevo- 
cable sentence, but by reason of a persistent wickedness ; i. e. 
the lost suffer for ever, not because they must, but because they 
will. 

The apparent advantages of this theory are the following : 1. 
It aims to address the conscience, as well as the fears of men ; 
and to a right-minded man the thought of eternal sinfulness is 
more horrible than of eternal suffering. 2. It seeks to relieve 
the doctrine of an eternal infliction. 3. It is sufficient as a vin- 
dication of God's justice, if the fact it assumes be admitted. No 
one doubts that a man should be miserable as long as he is sinful, 
though it be. for ever. 

But these advantages, if we mistake not, are purchased at a 
ruinous cost. For, (1.) the appeal to the conscience is singularly 
ineffective. Men are not apt to be afraid of becoming wicked ; 
much less of becoming fiends. If they have not lost integrity, 
they think that is impossible. And utter, eternal abandonment 
seems to them the more incredible, if they are to retain an eter- 
nal freedom. If on the other hand they are already corrupt, 
an eternal career of wickedness has lost its terror. It acquires 
a certain dignity, as we have already shown, and they glory in 
their future shame. 

We speak of eternal freedom, because that is essential to the 
theory. To deny it, is to shift the ground of the argument. But 
this freedom is admitted, not only in numerous statements of 
the theodicy, but in the Restorationism which appears in all his- 
tory as its natural result. If through eternity the lost soul is 
not compelled to cherish its guilt, the suffering of penalty may 
effect its reform. It was just this notion of an inalienable power 
of amendment, that was carried to its consistent result by Origen, 
in the belief, that the lost might repent and be saved, and that 
the saved might sin again and fall. Thus, instead of an eternal 
necessity, evil appeared as an eternal vicissitude, which no divine 
wisdom or creature perfection could prevent. And though this 
early causeway between heaven and hell is now broken up from 



116 



THE TIIEODICIES. 



its place in theology, we shall see that a broader platform, so 
wide that it is not often measured, has taken its place. 

(2.) The supposed advantage respecting the mode of divine 
punishment is only apparent. The notion of remorse of con- 
science, instead of literal fire and physical torture, is an advan- 
tage so far as it suggests that the penalty is self-inflicted or may 
be inherently just. But this is an indirect argument of the 
hazardous freedom we have just named; and, while it pleases a 
philosophic taste, its tendency is to remove the hand of God 
away from future punishment, so \ t shall no longer appear as His 
judgment. It is then an easy thing to deny His right to inflict 
penalty, and in a kmd of Naturalism He is theorized away from 
the scene of final judgment; 

(3.) Though the theodicy would sufl^ice, it is unproven. It is 
undermined by the element of freedom which it assumes. For 
while a perfect holiness may be ever maintained without destroy- 
ing freedom, the blessed being supposed to meet with every sup- 
port and encouragement of virtue, — eternally persistent sin in 
suffering is hardly to be looked for, if it be not a necessity fatal 
to the idea of sin. Hence it is significant of the weakness of 
the argument, when Dr. Schafi^, perhaps its ablest defender, 
reduces the freedom of the lost to a minimum, thus : " The ele- 
ment o^ freedom must here indeed be very limited. For the 
habitual sinner is already the slave of sin (John viii. 34), and 
incapable, unless by the divine redeeming grace still present to 
him, to escape from its dominion. Accordingly, the thraldom of 
the blasphemer must be of the highest degree, and he can have 
only that seeming-freedom (Scheinfreiheit), that almost flicker- 
ing spark of freedom which is quite necessary to the conception 
of personality, which he still retains even in his most hideous 
deformity." ^ 

We have remarked that the theory makes no account of in- 
flicted punishments. But if we allow the slightest pressure from 
such a source, the least trace of the freedom assumed will prove 
fatal to the theory. Bellarmine was of opinion that one glimpse 

1 Die Siinde wider den heiligen Geist, pp. 101, 102. 



ETERNAL SINFULNESS. 



117 



of hell- fire were sufiicient to make the most flagitious sinner turn 
Christian ; nay, live as an hermit, a most strict mortified life. 
Would not the sense of pain, along with a rational freedom, drive 
the anguished soul at once to a God who is regarded as not 
implacable, — to a heaven which is left open by the supposition 
that the lost might " possess many advantages, and these of a 
Tery important nature ? " 

But in fact the freedom of the lost seems to be denied, not 
only by Augustine, when he says : " The first death drives the 
reluctant soul out of the body ; the second death holds the reluc- 
tant soul in the body ; they are alike in this, that the soul suffers 
from the body what it wills not ; " ^ but also by the numerous 
passages of Scripture which represent the lost as driven away to 
their punishment, willing to be saved but it is too late, and the 
very possibility of salvation finally cut off. And the only passage 
supposed to suggest an eternal sinfulness (Rev. xxii. 11) will be 
shown, in the proper place, to apply not to a future state of pun- 
ishment, but to the scenes of time. 

But this is not all. The principle of this theodicy is that of 
the " ethical theology" now so prevalent, which so utterly ignores 
all that is peculiar to the religion of Christ. According to this 
theology, reward and punishment are not only just, but natural 
and inevitable ; they are dispensed by the proper and indestructi- 
ble faculties of man's being. Virtue is the highest health of the 
soul ; sin is hardly a disease ; it is only irregular or perverse 
action, and its penalty, unrest. There is no crisis, of Fall or of 
Redemption, as there is to be none of life or death. The judg- 
ment is not a crisis; for it decides nothing for the future. It 
fixes no destiny beyond the omnipotence of immortal free agency. 
And as there is no judgment, there can be no grace. Christ is 
not a Savior. He may be a helper ; but he delivers from no 
evil which the undying vigor of the soul might not, in the light 
of eternity, discover and repair. There is no forgiveness ; what 
we call by that blessed name is only the remission of sins after 
they have been put away. The mind is its own place; and^ 



iDe Civ. Dei, I. 21, c. 3. 



118 



THE THEODICIES. 



creating its own character, it can break the strongest bonds of 
sin, and make the prison of despair radiant with heavenly light. 
Thus, with an unimpaired immortality, man becomes his own 
savior, and the Gospel of Christ an offence. 

As the theodicy has been stated thus far, there has been no 
denial of God's power or right to put an end to the supposed on- 
going sinfulness by the extinction of the sinner. But this denial 
is made frequently, and recently. Thus it is said: "If in his 
impenitent state the punished offender is adding perpetually to 
his sin, does not each moment of that penal woe claim the mo- 
ment next following, also, as due to retribution ? And this must 
be the case immortally with a soul immortally sinning. Ever 
persisting guilt will require ever persisting punishment ; and 
thus justice may for ever forbid its escape into naught. The 
only escape from this eternal necessity of justice binding it to 
existence, would seem to be in making justice contemporary 
with, crime, or in inflicting it on souls bereft of moral conscious- 
ness, and thus incapable of continued sin ; both of which expedi- 
ents would seem to be foreign to the idea of punishment, and 
certainly unsupported by the analogies of the present life."^ 

Are there no analogies in nature, or in human governments, 
to support God's right of release from an endless struggle with 
those who rebel against Him ? Must the officer of justice not 
disarm or restrain the culprit, in order to enforce the law that 
condemns him ? Must he hazard the murderous stroke of the 
bov/ie knife, or death by the revolver, for some scruple respect- 
ing the right to disarm a man ? May human justice employ 
prisons and strait-jackets ? and may not divine justice withdraw 
one, and not another, of the abused faculties which divine good- 
ness gave ? May not God, with a touch or a glance, palsy the 
rebellious will, leaving the conscience with full power of remorse, 
but powerless to sin ? Is the human soul, though it has made 
itself accursed, still so sacred a thing that God does wrong to 
impair it ? Or, to waive this prescription of methods to God, 

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 133. The denial of actual sin on 
the part of the lost, made by many divines, is here significant, though it pertains 
more strictly to another theodicy. See below, p. 123, note. 



A LAW OF NATURE. 



119 



can his swift and unimpaired justice in no way overtake the 
puny culprit, or strike him down in death ? Is not the restraint 
of guilt a primary object of punishment ; insomuch that these 
two things were both denoted by the same word {!c6la(jtg) in the 
classic Greek ? And are we now told that the punished sinner, 
in his inmost power of guilt, must not be restrained at all? 
Shall we thus reduce Omnipotent Wisdom to the predicament of 
the unskilful conjurer, who has evoked an evil spirit not knowing 
by what spell he is put down again, and who must contend with 
him henceforth as best he can ! 

We have remarked that the doctrine of eternal sinfulness 
finds no support in the Bible. The theodicy is given up, in a 
significant manner, by Hopkins, as neither scriptural nor rational. 
Having said that unless sin is an infinite evil, " it must be ac- 
knowledged that no reason can be offered why God should 
punish the sinner for ever," he adds : " The Scripture represents 
sinners to be sentenced to this punishment . . . for the sins 
which they did commit whe7i in the body, in this world." And 
" there does not appear to be any justice in sentencing a sinner 
to a punishment which he does not already deserve for what he 
has done." 

Here it is easy to see that the theodicy (which as stated by 
some of its adherents makes the future judgment "hypothetical") 
is equivalent and very similar to that of the scientia media Dei. 
Thus the most popular theory is most closely allied to that 
which none will now acknowledge, though we have seen it almost 
expressed by a living writer. The difference between them is 
made by fhe latent sentiment we have noticed, that the final 
judgment is not a crisis, and may not be a finality. 

§ 19. A LAW OF NATURE. 

Besides the inseparable connection between all sin and misery, 
a law of nature is sometimes asserted for the eternity of future 
misery. Thus Abp. King : " Whatever is perpetual must have 
a natural and perpetual cause ; for a perpetual miracle is not to 

1 Liquiry into the Future State, Works, II. 439, 440, note. 



120 



THE THEODICIES. 



be expected. If therefore the punishment of the wicked be eter- 
nal, it seems necessary for these punishments to arise from the 
laws and constitution of nature. For it is scarce conceivable 
how a state of violence should be perpetual." ^ And Bp. Bur- 
net : " If any difficulty arises in our minds that this punishment 
is said to be everlasting, as seeming inconsistent with the good- 
ness and justice of God to punish finite sins with everlasting 
sufferings, we may consider. First, That this suffering is founded 
in the nature of things, and is not properly an act of God, but 
the natural effect of a natural cause. .And when this suffering is 
threatened by God as a punishment, it is really nothing more 
than a forewarning of sinners of what will be the consequence of 
their folly, and what their sins will naturally bring upon them."' 
And Dr. J.Young: " In the world beyond the grave shall there be 
found perished minds ! lost spirits ! in which intellect, conscience, 
soul, have become dead ? Immortal wrecks ! Fires gone out, 
that might have glowed v/ith undying brightness ! Lights that 
might have sparkled for ever in the glorious firmament, quenched 
in the blackness of everlasting night ? In all the horror of this 
conception, and should it ever be realized, at least we are sure 
that it is no doing of the Holy One, no ordination of his, no 
punishment which He has appointed, and which his hand inflicts. 
It lies in the nature of things, and is the proper, necessary work- 
ing out of crime itself ; and crime, with all its tremendous conse- 
quences, is that which the Almighty only hates eternally, which 
He is for ever resisting, and which it is the design of every 
department of his Providence, and of the entire plan of Provi- 
dence, to exterminate." ^ 

This theodicy is sometimes illustrated by the case of a man 
who maims and disables himself ; and we are asked if his evil 
case, beginning in guilt, can end in innocence ? 

In reply to the whole argument we remark that the freedom 

1 Origin of Evil, Appendix, § 2. 

2 Demonstration of True Keligion, Boyle Lecture Sermons, III. 494, 495. 

3 The Mystery, pp. 226, 227. Compare J. Scott, Christian Life, Preface; — 
Buchanan, Modern Atheism, p. 421; — Thompson, Christian Theism, pp. 160, 
161, 426;— Hamilton, Kewards and Punishments, pp. 308-312, 404, 428. 



PHRENST. 



121 



of will, which in the last theodicy was reduced to a minimum, 
here disappears altogether. That which began in freedom, emh 
in fate ; for a law of nature is essentially a chain of causes and 
effects, whose links can be sundered only by being destroyed. 
The man who is really disabled, by whatever guilt of his own. 
incurs no new guilt for continuing disabled. lie can not be 
blamed for not doing what he can not do. If then he suffers 
eternally, this will be either for an infinite guilt of his original 
sin, or by a fatality which God himself can neither prevent or 
overrule. The former supposition implies theories which we 
have found untenable. The latter makes Fate stronger than 
God. And at the best, the theodicy is an attempt to erect a 
rampart between God and etertial woe, under a fair name that 
shall seem to save His character. We have only to ask, Is not 
He the Author of Nature ? 

§ 20. PHRENSY. 

There are certain forms of the last theodicy in which the 
notion of freedom is explicitly abandoned. Thus Coleridge 
remarks, by way of supposition : " Why need we talk of a fiery 
hell ? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were with- 
drawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no 
other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then 
feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be a conscious 
madness — a horrid thought ! " ^ And Martineau : " In many a 
hospital of mental disease (as it is called) you have doubtless 
seen a melancholy being pacing to and fro with rapid strides, 
and lost to every thing around, wringing his hands in incom- 
municable suffering, and letting fall a low mutter, rising quickly 
into a shrill cry; his features cut with the graver of sharp 
anguish ; his eyelids drooping, (for he never sleeps,) and show- 
ering ever scalding tears. It is the maniac of remorse, possibly 
indeed made wretched by merely imaginary crimes ; but just as 
possibly maddened by too true a recollection, and what the world 
would esteem too scrupulous a conscience. Listen to him and 



1 Table Talk, Sept. 28, 1830. 



122 



THE THEODICIES. 



you will often be surprised into fresh pity, to find how seemingly 
shght are the offences, injuries perhaps of mere unripened 
thought, which feed the fires, and whirl the lash of this incipient 
woe. He is the dread type of Hell." ^ 

The following fearful picture is drawn by McCosh : " Tied, 
like Mazeppa, on a courser over which he has no control, he 
would feel a kind of ecstasy in the A'ery wildness of his career- 
ing. Not only so, but acquiring courage from despair, he may 
proceed the length of making war with the judge. Since he 
can not flee from him, he will perhaps affect to condemn him, or 
impugn the authority of his law. 

' Souls who dare look the omnipotent tp-ant in 
His everlasting face, and tell him that 
His evil is not good.' — Byron's Cain. 

" But this is by no means so easy a work, for meanwhile God 
has a witness in every man's bosom. There must be some way 
of deluding this witness before so bold a step can be taken. The 
spirit will now try to make the conscience condemn the judge as 
being harsh and relentless. Strange and paradoxical as it may 
appear, it will, to some extent, be successful. It will picture to 
the conscience condemnation as a dark deed of tyranny and 
revenge committed by God ; and believing, or trying to believe, 
that God IS malignant, it will view Him with the feelings which 
malignity should inspire. And now the soul will not only be 
angry with God, but will feel as if it did right to be angry, and 
the war which it carries on will not only be that of the passions, 
but of an evil conscience. . . The war, too, will now be incessant. 
If it were merely that of the passions, there might be cessations, 
and gaps, and intervals ; but being that of a troubled conscience, 
as well as of a disordered heart, it becomes a constant and ever- 
lasting warfare, without respite and without end." ^ 

If we consider this theory simply as making the condition of 
the lost a destiny, the criticism of John Foster is pertinent and 

1 Endeavors after the Christian Life, pp. 216, 217; cited in " Human Nature." 

2 Divine Gov., 1st Am. ed., pp. 403, 404. 



PHRENSY. 



123 



adequate : " The allegation (of eternal sinfulness) is of no avail 
in vindication of the doctrine, because the first consignment to 
the dreadful state necessitates a continuance of the criminality ; 
the doctrine teaching that it is of the essence, and is an awful 
aggravation, of the original consignment, — that it dooms the 
condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged for ever. 
The doom to sin as well as to suffer, and, according to the argu- 
ment, to sin in order to suffer, is inflicted as the punishment of 
the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually, therefore, the 
eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins of time." 

But, we may add, in each of these representations the " law 
of nature " which underlies the argument, and which is supposed 
to be a law of human nature, appears as undermining and 
deranging that nature. The beings here described have ceased 
not only to be responsible, but to be human. They are maniacs. 
And in whatever faculty of the soul the " law of nature " is sup- 
posed to work eternal retribution, it will be found to have 
changed humanity into a monstrosity. According to this view 
the door of mercy is shut against the lost, absolutely and for ever. 
The final judgment is strictly an irrevocable sentence against 
them. If they should repent, they would still be utterly and 
hopelessly lost. The theory thus avoids the difficulties that 
encounter the doctrine of eternal voluntary sinfulness. But it 
shifts the burden without removing it. For with freedom, char- 
acter also ceases ; since voluntary purpose — no less voluntary 
because it may be a cherished and settled habit — is the soul of 
character. And the subject of the eternal punishment here 
described is no longer a responsible being; is not a person, but a 
thing. And if the justice of the doom can not be made out by 
some infinitude of guilt in this life, then the blasphemy of the 
terrible epic just quoted, is not blasphemy. If on the other hand 
the guilt of a creature which does not end in innocence, can not 
end in death, then we have a necessity which God himself must 
ever deplore, and the wail of the world of despair is echoed back 
from the dwelling-place of the Most High.^ 

1 Here belong the expressions of numerous divines who deny that there is sin 



124 



THE THEODICIES. 



§ 21. EESTRAINT. 

A theory has been recently stated, and supported by the fol- 
lowing passages from Swedenborg: "They [the unrepentant] 
are cast into hell, where they are compelled by punishments not 
to do evil ; but punishments do not take away the will, the inten- 
tion, and consequent thought of evil ; they only take away the 
act."^ Again : " Those who had punished and tormented others 
are in their turn punished and tormented by others ; and this 
continues until at length their desire abates from the fear of pun- 
ishment."^ Again: "He, after death, will be chastised and 
punished ; which will be continued until, through fear of punish- 
ment, he commit evil no longer, although even then he can never 
be induced to do good from the love of good."^ 

Tne theory offered " is simply the reduction of the hells to 
to such external order as amounts to universal and particular 
obedience ; or such obedience as is final and eternal, never more 
to break out into open rebellion. But this obedience is from a 
selfish motive, viz : — the tiresomeness of sin from its conse- 
quences, and the love of happiness from such outward obedience." 

In this sense sin is finished, and all enemies subdued. But, in 
the heavens, the internals are cleansed, as well as the externals 

among the lost. Thus Augustine, speaking of the two kingdoms of the blessed 
and the damned, Enchir. ad Laurent, c. Ill: Tlie former can have no will to 
sin, and the latter no power." Aquinas, asserting the day of judgment to be a 
nnal consummation of good and evil, Summa, pars. 3, q. 98, part 6: " Good will 
among the blessed will not be merit, but reward ; and evil will among the 
damned will not be demerit, but punishment only." Lombard, Sentent. 1. 4. 
dist. 50, tells us that others" confess this evil will to be sin, but they hold that 
it deserves no punishment; for among the lost there is no scope for desert. And 
lie concludes that their evil will is an aggravation of their penalty ; by which, 
however, they merit nothing, because no one acquires merit save in this life. 
Abp. King, Origin of Evil, App. § 2, says of future punishments: " Sin will be 
at an end, and the very possibility of sinning, before they shall be inflicted." 
Dr. Willard, Assembly's Catechism, q. 19, notices the dispute whether the lost 
contract new guilt, with the remark: "There is much pleaded on both sides; 
but 1 shall leave it in medio.'''' Compare Erbkam, Stud, und Krit. 1838, No. I. 
pp. 401,409. 

1 Apocalypse Explained, 1165. 2 Arcana Coelestia, 8232. 

8 True Christian Keligion, 531. 



RESTRAINl. 



125 



reduced to order ; tliey are hence obedient from the love of God 
and truth itself. In one reigns the love of the Lord and the 
neighbor ; in the other the love of self and the world. Out- 
wardly, they may, in a very advanced state of progression, far 
off in tlie depths of eternity, look somewhat alike. They will 
all be engaged in the performance of uses. But as their motives 
are different, even opposite, they would, if seen by a spiritual 
eye in their respective forms, appear directly opposite to each 
other ; ' Like two men treading against each other, feet to feet.* 
And this opposite relation they may retain for ever. Thus, 
Heaven and Hell are both eternal ; and at the same time uni- 
versal obedience is rendered to the Lord of Hosts, from all 
worlds and all dominions."^ 

The chief merit of this theory is the broad distinction it makes 
between the outward and the inward — the deed and the will — 
the acting of virtue and the hearty love of it. This distinction 
is made to explain an eternal difference between heaven and 
hell, while it is remarked that in an eternal progression, as the 
constant law of the universe, " to what a height, in the far dis- 
tant eternity, may the hells eventually attain ! . . . They may, 
in some far off stage of their progress, get to exceed, in mere 
external quietness and peace, many good people's present idea 
of heaven ; " though " to the heavens they would for ever look 
black and ugly" (p. 16). It is also a signal merit of this view, 
that it conceives a state of blessedness so exalted — a heaven so 
high — that a seeming heaven may be a hell beside it. 

But, can the theodicy be consistently maintained ? Does it not, 
on the one hand, annex the outward reward of virtue to the love 
of vice ? Beneath a superimposed happiness, may not the dis- 
tinctions of good and evil, right and wrong, be concealed from 
the view of the lost ? For ever acting virtue, as in a stage play, 
would they not be hypocrites at first, to be self-deceived at last, 
seeing the curtain never drops ? And, in an eternal restraint, 
what becomes of their practical freedom ? Is it not lost ? And 
if they suspect or feel themselves restrained, then, on the other 

1 W. M. Femaid, Eternity of Heaven and Hell ; A renunciation of Universal- 
ism, pp. 12, 18. 

11* 



126 



THE THEODICIES. 



hand, is not even their poor and empty happiness at an end ? 
And thus is it not a refutation beforehand of the theory, when it 
is said that " the evil are happier, when reduced to a state of 
entire conformity with their ruling love, than while they are liv- 
ing in a hypocritical, assumed appearance of goods and truths 
which they have not interiorly. . . . From those who are in 
evils, goods will be taken away ; and from those who are in falses, 
truths will be taken away. All will be reduced to speak as they 
think, and to act as they will ; and not. as they do in this world, 
to speak one thing and think another, and will one thing and act 
another" (p. 9). 

§ 22. TWILIGHT. 

Between the two last named theories lies a field of confused 
speculation respecting the state of the lost. Confused, we call 
it, because it asserts no active malignity, nor intense suffering 
— neither hazardous freedom nor terrible bondage of the lost 
soul ; yet interesting, as betraying the unrest of the human mind 
on this subject, and as sometimes leaning toward what we regard 
as the true theodicy. 

1. It is often said that to be banished from the presence ot 
God, with no other suffering than the sense of an eternal loss, 
will be a suflicient woe ; and a merciful God will condemn to 
nothing worse. This is a common sentiment among Christians 
who have lost impenitent friends. It was perhaps also what 
Bunyan conceived when he said that if he should lose heaven at 
last, he could still adore God in the world of despair ; this per- 
suasion was the assurance of his hope. And, as is well known, 
a similar religious experience has often been asked of those first 
making profession of their faith. 

2. Religious melancholy often depicts a lost condition with a 
certain mixture of pious feeling. Many who have deemed them- 
selves reprobate, have thought of their future selves as among 
fiends, but not of them. They would fain dissuade them from 
cursing and blasphemy, and engage them at least in prayer, 
though praise be too high for them.-^ 

1 Brcidwardiue, cited by R. Williams, Christianity and Hinduism, p. olS. 



TWILIGHT. 



127 



3. The fatuity of the lost often takes the form of pleasure in 
evil, or of happy delusion. In uneasy and unenviable joys, their 
condition may be hideous and detestable, but not otherwise fear- 
ful. To low and vulgar minds this is the same that an eternal 
career of splendid wickedness is to minds of a loftier make. In 
the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg this view of the condition 
of the lost is somewhat prominent. It is stated by an earlier 
writer thus : " The divine goodness is not to be charged with cru- 
elty for letting them continue in that existence, though it be very 
miserable, when they themselves will not have it removed ; or 
for not altering their condition, which they utterly refuse to have 
altered. It is better for them, indeed, not to be than to be ; but 
only in the opinion of wise men, to which they do not assent." ■'■ 

4. It is sometimes thought that the inflicted sufferings of the 
future state may be at times remitted, or ever moderate and 
endurable. Augustine himself once allowed the expression that 
" the punishments of the damned are mitigated, at certain inter- 
vals ; since the wrath of God might still be said to abide upon 
them."^ And a form of theodicy sometimes mooted is this — 
that the sufferings of the lost are so reduced in degree, that, 
though eternal in duration, they are still finite in their sura.^ 

5. The eternal progress of the lost in knowledge and capacity 
is sometimes denied. Thus we are told : "An assumption which 
adds nothing to the plain scriptural doctrine of retribution, is that 
the wicked will go on indefinitely increasing in capacities and in 
degrees of suffering, on a scale not unlike that of the righteous. 
The Scriptures do not expressly teach such doctrine. Sin does 
not, like holiness, enlarge the capacities of the soul. It has no 
tendencies that way, — punishment has none."* 

To all this indistinct theodicy, we need not reply in detail. 

1 King, Origin of Evil, App. § 2. 2 Enchir. ad Laurent, c. 112. 

3 Asa Shinn, On the Supreme Being. 

^ Review of T. S. Smith's Illustrations of the Div. Gov., Chr. Spec. March, 
1836, pp. 98, 99, Compare, Augustine and Pelagius, (below, p. 331, sq.):— 
Lombard, Sentent. 1. 4, dist. 46: Non incongi-ue dici potest, Deum, etsi juste 
id possit, non omnino tanium punire malos in futuro, quantum merueranr. sed 
eis ahquid, tantumcuuque mali sint, de poena refoxare; " — Malebranche, Medi- 
tations Chretiemies, vii, supposes the sulfeiings of the lost to bo partly remitted, 



128 



THE THEODICIES. 



In some of its statements the lost appear as half dead ; showing 
few signs of immortal vigor. In others, their deportment is un- 
worthy of an immortal existence. And in all, the Jinal retribu- 
tion makes slow progress. The conceptions are all in twilight, 
both as they picture a condition between the glaring light of 
God's eternal frown, and the blackness of darkness for ever ; 
and as they indicate the feeble hold the human mind has on the 
ideas of the Eternal and the Infinite. 

This mixed theodicy of life and death is, we think, untenable. 
The living human soul can not be stationary. Nothing else 
than a habit of unceasing oblivion could subject it to eternal 
illusions ; and an eternal power of thinking must give it increase 
of knowledge ; and knowledge, experience ; and the notion of 
experience is fatal to each form of the argument. The prisoners 
whom it would hold must either come out into the light of day, 
or sink in eternal night. In a word, they must either live or 
die. 

Beside being in itself an unrest of the Christian intellect, and 
a burden to the Christian faith, the argument, we think, encum- 
bers the divine administration with a sloth of justice, and the 
universe with a mass of useless being, 

for satisfaction made by Christ. Arminius, Eesp. ad xxxi Articul. 14, cites 
opinions that infants dying unbaptized will be in the mildest condemnation ; 
that they will suffer without remorse of conscience ; and that they will suffer 
penalty of loss, but not of sense. The last named is the doctrine of the Limbus 
Infantum, as professed by Leibnitz, Systema Theolog. p. 334, Paris, 1819. See 
also Lombard, Sentent. 1. 2, dist. 33. The second is adopted by Ridgely, who 
alludes. Body of Divinity, q. 47, to an opinion that those dying in infancy ever 
remain in an infantile state. Leibnitz, Th^odic^e, Part. L § 19; Abrtge de la 
Controv., thought there might be incomparably more of happiness in the glory 
of the saved, though less numerous, than of misery in the damned. Saurin, 
Sermon on Hell, thinks the doctrine of degrees in future punishments " may 
serve to solve the difficulty of the doctrine of their eternity." Niemeyer, Popul. 
Theol. § 305, and Morus, Epitome, p . 302, allow the improvement of the lost, 
with happiness ever imperfect. Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, 4038, says that 
some " sit like dead stocks, and afterwards serve as a class of subjects that 
have scarcely any life." See also Paley, Mor. Phil. b. 1, c. 7; — Harris, note 
on Foster's Letter. Appeal to Am. Tract Society, pp. 40-42. 



CHAPTER IV. 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 

" What if God, -willing to show His wrath, and to make His power 
known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to 
destruction 1 " 

We have now shown that the doctrine of eternal evil resulting 
from an event in time is dualistic, and that Theodicy does not 
relieve this limitation of the divine power. Before we proceed 
to the scriptural argument, we will offer some reasons to show 
that evil is temporary, and thus consists with a true Theism. 

§ 1. EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 

Besides the theodicies we have examined, various arguments 
are adduced to show either an eternal necessity or an eternal 
economy of evil. These may be classified as the epidictic, eu- 
daimonic, and disciplinary theories. 

I. The epidictic theory supposes evil needful in order to 
display some divine attribute. E. g. : 

1. The Divine Power. — Thus we are often told that the 
destruction of revolted subjects could only be a dernier ressort of 
the Sovereign Ruler, and proof of His weakness. " Why," it is 
asked, " should God strike them from existence, unless because 
it is impossible to uphold and rule them for ever in revolt, in a 
manner worthy of his perfections, and compatibly with the safety 
of his government over his other subjects ? But an inability to 
reign over them in such a manner would be an imperfection ; and 
to annihilate a vast crowd of creatures because of such an 
inability would be a public acknowledgment and demonstration 
of that imperfection. It would form an indisputable proof that 
He was unequal to his station ; that He had called beings into 



130 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



existence whom He was unable to uphold and rule conformably 
to their character, in such a manner as not to defeat the ends for 
which He created them." Such a destruction, we are told, 
would furnish Satan with an excuse for rebellion, and a boast of 
triumph over God.^ 

The reply is two-fold. (1.) What are " the ends for which 
God created" his rebellious subjects? Certainly the end of 
government is obedience, and not the mere display of statesman- 
ship. Hence it may be doubted whether God can rule rebels 
" for ever in revolt, in a manner worthy of his perfections." 
But, waiving this limitation of the divine power, the transparent 
fallacy of the argument is (2.) an assumption that what God can 
do, He must do. Who ever doubted that the Omnipotent can 
manage his creatures, in some way, so long as He keeps them in 
being ? He can do this eternally, if any sceptic should ask such 
proof of his power. But He is able also 7iot to do this. As true 
courage fears not the cry of cowardice, so God may contemn the 
charge of weakness, though in so doing He should remind us of 
his power to create by un-creating the worthless. But, by the 
argument in hand, God's capacities are made divine necessities. 
If He can conserve the rebellious. He must do so, lest Satan 
should deride Him, and all the people distrust Him. He is 
therefore bound hand and foot, by the green withes of our the- 
ology, until the trumpet shall sound : " The Eternities be upon 
thee, O Lord ! " Until then, the bands, we doubt not, will 
strengthen some sort of faith. 

2. The display of Divine Justice. — We have already shown 
that eternal suffering is not to be claimed as the right of God's 
justice. But it is urged that such endless punishment is ivanted, 
to exhibit this eternal attribute of God. " Sin and its power in 
the world could not be missing, because that contrast of the two 
divine attributes, of punitive justice on the one hand, and mercy 
on the other, quite dualistically exhibited, required objects in 
which to reveal itself." ^ 

1 D. N. Lord, Theol. and Lit. Journal, Jan. 1851, p. 401. 

2 Miiller, (stating the view Beza,) Chr. Doc. of Sin, L 421. — See also the 
critique of Leibnitz, Theodicee, Part. II. § 238; and of Bayle, K^ponse aux 



1 

■I 



EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 



131 



Here the reply is also two-fold. (1.) If this divine attribute 
needed an eternal suffering not strictly its due, the deplorable 
want might be supplied from an eternal succession of the sinning 
and perishing. But (2.) we deny the impoverishing need. The 
law of God asks obedience, to be rewarded with blessing. The 
recompense of reward is the display of justice which God desires. 
He needs nothing which He forbids. All penal suffering is the 
necessity not of God's infinite fulness, but of man's wickedness 
and weakness. 

3. The display of God's Holiness.- — ''May not divine wis- 
dom," it is asked, " find a fitting end in keeping the wicked in 
endless existence as an endless and requisite expression of the 
divine displeasure and abhorrence toward sin ? Such a living 
and actual expression may alone be adequate to bring out the 
mind of God before His creatures." ^ 

This is to suppose that the holiness of God, of which the 
Shekinah was the sacred symbol, can not shine brightly enough 
by its own light, but needs the hideous deformity and blackness 
of sin for its illustration. God needs that v/hich it is his very 
nature to detest, — and it must be a feature of the eternal world 
if not a part of his plan, — that his abhorrence of it may appear I 
The whole theory is a contradiction, which reminds one of the 
supposed wisdom of keeping up the fire upon the altar of the 
temple of Ephesus, by digging down the coal foundations on 
which it rested. It justifies tH% remark of Mohler upon the 
theory of Beza just named : " It was thus the part of the Deity 
to call forth somehow an evil sentiment, in order to attain his 
ends ; that is to say. He must annihilate his sanctity, in order on 
its ruins to attain to compassion and justice." ' 

4. The display of God's Mercy. — This theory is suggested in 
some of the passages already cited. By one writer it is stated 
as the Church doctrine, as contained in the old expression : 

Questions, Part. 11. c. 152. Compare Jurieu, Jugement sur les Mdthodes, § 13 ; — 
Emmons, Serm. on Rev. xix. 3. 

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb., 1856, p. 131. Compare Jmieu, De Pace 
ineunda, p. 188 ; — Hopkins, Works, II. 459. 

2 Symbolism, b. 1, part 1, \ 4. 



132 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



" Happy the guilt, which did invite 
Such a Redeemer and so great ! " ^ 

It is specially favored by a supralapsarian theology, which sup- 
poses the work of Redemption, as the richest possible display of 
divine love, to be an essential if not the main feature of the plan 
of creation. In this view, man's failure was the necessary pre- 
lude of God's success. That is, the creation would have been a 
failure if man had not fallen ! 

Besides a few passages of Scripture that seem to represent 
the plan of grace as the choice work of God, and the subjects of 
it as special favorites of Heaven, this theory finds an apparent 
support in the devout gratitude which becomes the redeemed. 
All the blessings we receive are a pure mercy and gratuity ; the 
wealth of divine goodness to man is a grant of God's compassion. 
And all the genuine goodness or love which man has toward 
God, is wrought by His undeserved love and pity in the gift of 
his Son as our Savior. And since Redemption is every thing 
to man, and the work of salvation is crowned with shoutings of 
Grace! Grace! unto it, — it is easy for man to think of grace as 
the best of all possible things, and that the universe would be 
poor if sin had not given occasion for display of its riches. 

But while the tender and blessed sense of sins forgiven, of 
pangs relieved, of sorrows assuaged, and of poverty enriched, 
suggest the thought that guilt is a happy thing in the world, — 
the moral sense, the conscience, remonstrates. What parent, 
shedding tears of joy over a wayward child, subdued and im- 
proved by chastening or sickness, would not experience a strange 
revulsion of feeling, if the child should congratulate its past 
waywardness as the occasion of its amendment, and repeat the 
saying : Felix culpa ! As sin is in its very idea that which 
ought not to be, so it is implied in sorrow for it that the penitent 
shall ever wish he had not sinned. The most w^ondrous display 
of God's undeserved love can only inspire the more ardent wish 
that one had not abused that love. It has been well said, by 

1 " 0 ! felix culpa, quas talem ac tantum 

Meruit habere Redemptorem ! " — Werdermann, Theodicee, I. 156. 



EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 



133 



one who even holds that infinite evil may be for infinilc good : 
" Throughout eternity man's state must imply and refer to his 
past disobedience, and his corrupt state of sin and death, and the 
suffering of Christ himself, which no redeemed soul can for an 
instant forget, or remember without sorrow." ^ 

And the passages of Scripture that may seem to support this 
notion of the economy of evil, will hardly sustain it. When we 
are told of the "joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repent- 
ance," allusion is made, probably, not to those who were truly 
righteous, but to the self-righteous. ^ The style of thought is the 
same as when Christ says : " The whole have no need of a phy- 
sician, but they that are sick." Heaven rejoices more in the 
humble publican, than in the proud Pharisee. And though 
Paul shows that where sin did abound, grace did superabound, 
yet, to the suggestion that men should sin that grace may abound, 
he instantly replies, as though it were a blasphemy : " whose 
condemnation is just." 

The whole theory of sin as the happy occasion of mercy also 
forgets that God's infinite love might have bestowed perhap^ 
greater blessings on men than they can now receive, with their 
faculties impaired by the Fall. And when we are told of the 
condescension of Christ, in humbling himself to suffering and 
death for our sake, it is forgotten that Christ might have been 
incarnate, as our Elder Brother, leading us on more rapidly in 
an eternal progress, if our guilt had not crowned him with thorns, 
and bidden him to enter the grave for our rescue. 

But it is asked, did not God from eternity provide a Redemp- 

1 Ruskin, Modem Painters, IT. 117. But in his " Stones of Venice," III. 138, 
139, he says: " The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so 
also the evil to the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and dark- 
ness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man. and his futurity. The love 
of God is, hovrever, always shown by the predominance or greater sum of good, 
in the end ; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eternal 
punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence, as of feeble powers 

reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. 
Why not, therefore, infinite good out of mfinite evil?" Compare Thompson, 
Christian Theism, pp 421, 422. Here again, we think, is the Komance of Faith, 

2 Alford, Comm. on Luke xy. 7. 



134 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



tion for man ? Doubtless. Yet it by no means follows that our 
need of Redemption was his choice ; for then we might ask : 
"Who hath resisted his will?" It pertains to the divine integ- 
rity that all God's plans should be against evil, and not for it. 
The remedy of evils is the most active desire that they had not 
been, whether in the heart of God or man. " Who will call 
^neas pious," says Seneca, "if he wished the city of Troy 
might be taken, that he might rescue his father out of captivity ? 
or the young Sicilians, if, in order to set their children a good 
example, they wished that -^tna would throw out an uncommon 
torrent of fire, to give them opportunity of showing their filial 
duty by snatching their parents out of the fire? Rome owes 
nothing to Scipio, if he prolonged the Carthaginian war to have 
the honor of putting an end to it ; nor to the Decii for dying to 
save their country, if they had first wished that an extreme 
necessity of affairs might give them an opportunity of bravely 
devoting themselves. Nothing can be more infamous in a physi- 
cian than to make himself work." ^ And may the Great Physi- 
cian, or the King who indeed can not do wrong, desire the lep- 
rosy of sin and the abomination of guilt as occasions for display- 
ing any of His attributes ? 

II. By the eudaimonic theory we mean that which supposes 
8»ffering to be useful by increasing the sense of happiness. It 
gives zest, we are told, to human delights. It is the seasoning 
of our enjoyments. The last theory regards evil as a means of 
revealing God ; the present regards evil as quickening the per- 
ceptions of man. There are two forms of it, according as suffer- 
ing is supposed to be remembered in one's own experience, or 
witnessed in the experience of others. 

1. It is a common remark that we know not the value of our 
blessings until we have lost them. Health is most prized and 
enjoyed after sickness. Whence the sentiment in the beautiful, 
though amorous poem of Gresset : 

1 De Beneficiis, 1. 6, c. 36 ; compare c. ST, and an able article in the Christian 
Spectator, Dec. 1832, pp. 614-660, showing that God " has not rejected a holy 
universe, and prefen'ed before it a universe marred, for healing.'^ 



EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 



" O the bliss of convalescence ! " 

And yet who desires sickness for the sake of the happy recovery 
from it ? Who pants for pain, in order to enjoy the release from 
it ? Who desires any complex experience of pangs and rescues 
to be repeated ? Who can reconcile the paradox that evil is 
" ever mournful and wrong when it is to happen, but often good 
when it has happened" ?^ And what Christian, tried by suffer- 
ing and loss, does not reproach himself as naturally too insensible 
of, and ungrateful for, God's constant blessings ? What may we 
infer from this dread of anguish and this conviction that we ought 
not to need it, but that it is not needful for perfect beings, and 
may be a token of our fallen state ? 

And an analysis of the theory may lead us to the same con- 
clusion. Admitting the fact that blessings brighten by the side 
of curses, it does not follow that they derive value from them. 
It is not the contrast between joy and sorrow that creates joy. 
If it were so, then the intenser anguish, piercing to the depths 
of one's own soul, would produce the higher joy. Cold does not 
create heat ; nor death, life. It is not the winter that quickens 
the growing fruits of summer. The highest forms of vegetable 
life are those that know no winter, but yield budding blossom 
and ripening fruit together through the year. So the Tree of 
Life, bearing twelve-fold fruits, from month to month. Darkness 
does not enlighten the day ; in the Heavenly Jerusalem there is 
no night. Is not the evil of suffering that we need now, the 
scourge of indifference and dulness ? 

2. There can not be a greater occasion of scandal to religion, 
than the notion that the bliss of the saved is enhanced by con- 
sideration of the woes of the damned. The doctrine appears in 
its boldest form, among the Schoolmen. Thus Aquinas : " That 
the bliss of the saved may please them more, and they render 
more abundant thanks to God for it, they are permitted to gaze 
upon the punishment of the wicked."^ And Peter Lombard: 

1 Immer ist es traurig und unreclit zu fallen, aber oft giit gefallen zu seyn." 
— Werdermann, Theodicee, I, 159. 

2 " UnuHiquodque ex comparatione contrarii magis cognoscitur, quia contra- 



136 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



" The elect v/ill come forth to behold the torments of the un- 
godly, and at this spectacle they will not be smitten "vvith sorrow ; 
on the contrary, while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the 
ungodly, they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their 
own salvation."^ All sympathy with the lost is denied by Quen- 
stedt. The difficulties on this score are admitted by another 
writer, who says : " Yet under another, a nearer, and much 
more affecting consideration, viz : that all this is the misery 
which they themselves were exposed to, and were in imminent 
danger of incurring, — in this view why may not the sense of 
their own escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin, as 
quite to extinguish the pain that usually attends the idea of it, 
and even render it productive of some real happiness The 
same view is combined with the previous theories by Hopkins, 
thus : " The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight 
of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass 
always before their eyes, to give them a constant, bright, and 
most affecting view. . . . This display of the divine character 
and glory will be in favor of the redeemed, and most entertain- 
ing, and give the highest pleasure to those who love God, and 
raise their happiness to ineffable heights." Should this eternal 
punishment " cease, and this fire be extinguished, it would in a 
great measure obscure the light of heaven, and put an end to a 
great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed."^ 

ria juxta se posita magis elucescunt. Et ideo ut beatitude sanctorum eis magis 
complaceat, et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datux* eis ut pcenas impiorum 
perfects videant." Summa, Pars III. Suppl. q. 94, prop. 1. 

1 Sentent. 1. 4, dist. 50, g. Cited by Feuerbach (Essence of Christianity, 
0.26) with the remark: " Tliis position is ... a characteristic expression of 
Christian, of believing love." 

2 King's Origin of Evil, c. 5, § 5, Law's note. He adds: "To this purpose 
apply that of [the Epicurean poet] Lucretius : 

" ' Suave mari magno turbantibus sequora ventis 
E terra alterius magnum spectare laborem ; 
Non quia vexari quenquam est jucunda voluptas, 
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cemere suave est.' " 

s Works, II, 457, 458; Park's Memoir, pp. 201, 202. Compare Gregoiy the 
Great, Moralia, 1. 34, c. 19; In Evangelia, 1. 2, Homil. 40, c. 8; In Job. 1. 33, c, 
14 ; —Baxter, Saints' Rest^ Part I. c. 7, Practical Works, IIL 38, 39, Lond. 1707 y— 



I EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 137 

To this theory we need not reply with analytic argument. It 
may be safely left to die under the pity of a humane theology. 
ij Even the Rabbles, who interpret the last verse of Isaiah's 
j ' prophecy of temporary suffering in Gehenna, speak of the right- 
eous as saying : " It is enough." We admire the amiable Lava- 
ter even for his unwarranted prayer, when he says : " I embraced 
i in my heart all that is called man; past, present, and future times 
I and nations, the dead, the damned, even Satan. I presented 
I them to God with the warmest wishes that He would have 
Ij mercy upon all." The notion of heavenly joy in the eternal 
i sufferings of the lost is indeed too consistent with that doctrine ; 
Ij but it has no place in the heart of many who hold it ; and with a 
j hopeful inconsistency many now suppose the blessed ignore the 
I woes of the lost;^ hence they seem useless, and might as well 
] not be. We trust the theory may not revive, now that the author 
of a Prize Essay dares commend the strong reprobation of it.'^ 

III. By the disciplinary theory we mean that which supposes 
evil needful as a trial and exercise of virtue. Thus Lactantius 
tells us : " Virtue is firm and unyielding patience in enduring 
evils ; whence it follows that where an adversary is wanting, 
there is no virtue." ^ And according to a modern writer there 
must be an adversary within the heart, or there can be no virtue. 
" Virtue rests simply and only upon moral corruption." In sup- 
port of which startling paradox we are asked Avhat virtue in 
temperance, without the appetite that makes a drunkard ? or in 
self-possession, without strong desire, anger, impatience ? or in 

Edwards, End in Creation, c. 2, § 5; Seraion on Matt. xxv. 46; — Strong, 
Doc. of Eter. Misery, pp. 172-174; — Erbkara, Studien und Kritiken, 1838, No. 
I. p. 410 : " We who would maintain the eternity of hell-torments in the strictest 
sense, can only see therein an admonition that we have not so to think of it as 
if there were but a minimum of actual sin. In other words, Hell, as the place 
of the damned, must be an expression of the divine nature no less than Heaven 
the place of the blessed. Paradoxical as this may seem at first view, every 
one will readily see that it is the only condition on which, from our funda- 
mental principle, an eternal damnation can be maintained." 

1 Schaflf, Die Sunde wider den heihgen Geist, p. 158. 

2 Thompson, Christian Theism, p. 301. 
8 Inst. Div. 1. 3, c. 29. 

12* 



138 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



love, placableness, pity, if all men were good, upright, happy ? 
What virtue in loving those who love us ?^ 

Is the same writer consistent in concluding that evil is unripe 
good, the work of God, and therefore good ? We think he is ; 
though we should then conclude with the ancients that necessity, 
which so mingles the cup of virtue and bliss, is the only evil. 

Let no one suppose that we deny or undervalue the patient 
virtues, which are the glory of Christianity. The redemption 
of a fallen race must begin with them ; and, in contrast with the 
sins of men and in their power. to overcome evil with good, they 
are peculiarly resplendent. God himself has exemplified them 
in his own long-suffering, pity, and condescension ; visiting sick 
humanity ; watching beside our bed of pain ; assuaging our dis- 
tress ; ministering to our comfort; enduring much from our fret- 
fulness ; trying many a grievous conflict with our madness and 
rage ; rewarded with much ingratitude ; yet freely forgiving all. 
Having given such an example in our behalf. He may well ask 
us to exercise these virtues in behalf of one another. 

But, must the possible virtues have been lacking in number, 
or inferior in quality, without these sad occasions ? What is 
virtue, if it be not the free action of our powers according to 
their proper laws ? The struggle with evil is only one exercise 
of these powers, — life, wrestling with disease and death, gaining 
strength, if not victory. Yet in all this our faculties are diverted 
from their legitimate use. It is like the sympathy of the body 
with an injured limb, turning aside its energies to repair the 
lesion. It is the painful effort to remove obstructions that ought 
not to be. And every virtue thus developed, so far as it is pecu- 
liar, is a special unfitness for the original duties of our being. 
The strength thus gained must be re-instructed, ere it can be 
applied in the creation of positive good. The bravery of the 
warrior must be disciplined anew for the hardy enterprises of 
peace. The special skill of the physician is almost useless when 
health prevails. The habits formed in opposing evils must be 
changed when evils cea&e. And how many bad habits are 

1 Viilaume, Ursprung und Absichte des Uebels, III. 136, sq. 



EVIL NOT NEEDFUL. 



139 



formed and bad feelings engendered in man's best warfare 
against the powers of darkness, how much he must first unlearn 
in the higher discipline of heaven, — none but the Master can 
tell. And if the universe were absolutely w^ithout evil, what 
right have we to assume that it might not furnish fit and ample 
material for the exercise of all created faculties, so their sharp- 
ness need not be turned to their own destruction ? or that Infinite 
Wisdom could not find for immortal beings duties sufiiciently 
hard and manifold, for the most perfect tempering, and for the 
richest luxuriance, of virtue ? 

But virtue is emotional as well as energetic. And we are told 
that man can learn a lively abhorrence of evil and an earnest 
cleaving to that which is good, only by conflict with suffering and 
wiong; that experience, though a severe, is a needful instructor. 
If so, we reply, then God has not endowed man with faculties 
for knowing that which most concerns him ; or if man has them, 
they can be developed only by that which should not be. But 
is man made so poor that evil must be part of his goods ? To 
say nothing of the perceptive faculties, that reveal to him all 
this fair world, and that may in due time explore the heavens 
where God dwells, what is Imagination, that tells us in myriad 
ways what and how things might be ? and Conscience, telling us 
what we and all men should be? The minds of men are teeming 
with fairy visions, beautiful day-dreams which it seems cruel to 
disturb. The world can hardly contain the books of fiction that 
are written ; and boundless space could not contain the air- 
castles that are built, — realms of delight which it is sad to think 
are unreal. And what countless evils do men shudder at, what 
vices do they detest, what crimes abhor, that exist only as things 
conceived? Must they, then, confront the hideous visage of 
actual sin, to know how fair is virtue? Even granting that 
fallen men, half dead, need to be rudely shocked into physical 
and moral sensibility, dare we say that perfected saints and holy 
angels need such stimulus to their ecstacies of sacred bliss? 
For them, might not the remotest thought of the sins we commit, 
and of the pains we feel, be terrible enough to clench their hold 
on good ? Or, if worse fancies were needed for their virtue, 



140 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



sliall we try to guess what frightful horrors they might not paint 
before their minds, to startle paradise with a salutary shudder ? 

Finally, the theory of evil as necessary to good is a denial of 
the integrity and reality of virtue. A moral being must be 
stronger than his necessities, in order to make them virtues. 
The power to bring good out of evil is weak, if it needs the evil 
for its occasion. As God, able to manage evil beings for ever, 
can also dispense with them, so the virtue of a finite creature can 
dispense with temporary evils, or it is worthless. If men can 
never come out of that dear school, experience, they will never 
be wise. Is there " no higher virtue than that which is gained 
by conflict ? no virtue, which, like the fruits of nature, grows by 
an organic, productive energy? Are there only hearts from 
which the oil is mechanically pressed ? none from which it flows 
spontaneously?"^ So far from being pure and disinterested, 
virtue is ever imperfect and false, if even in the glorified state it 
must be constrained by the sight or the knowledge of evil. In 
this view, Heaven itself becomes a prison, guarded round not by 
the shadowy " hydras, gorgons and chimeras dire " of a fertile, 
fearless fancy, but by actual grim forms that Necessity imposes 
as the eternal law and limit of the kingdom of light. 

We reject, then, the whole theory. Yet it may be accounted 
for. The human race are but little advanced beyond nothing- 
ness ; the regenerate are in the infancy of their eternal life. 
We have seen and felt much evil ; in relief from it, many joys. 
Most of our happiness has had suffering for its precursor, or its 
neighbor. What marvel, if we should mistake the common fact 
for a general law, and, wondering at the power of God and of 
good, should subsidize the evil they subdue as their servant for 
ever ? We do not reflect that it then loses its proper nature as 
fierce and malignant, and that if we strive to retain the theory, 
the distinction of good and evil ceases. 

But, we trust, when we have attained spiritual manhood, the 
contrasts and alternations that occasion our childish errors will 
be passed. We might then, but for our pardoned sins with which 



1 Tholuck, Guido and Julius, p. 60. 



THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 



141 



God does not upbraid us, forget the evils from which we are 
i saved, in the glorious duties for which we are saved. The 
! antagonism between a little good and real evil will be merged in 
j a higher antagonism between absolute good and relative evil. 
I The contest against wrong will give place to happier struggles 
! with difficulties where no evil lurks, — hard problems of thought 

and work which Eternal Wisdom knows how to propose. The 
ij manna of blessing, that cloys now if it be not spiced, will be our 

wonted food when we shall hunger and thirst after righteousness, 

" From seeming evil still educing good, 
I ^ And better thence, and better still, 

In infinite progression." 

j § 2. THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 

What is sin, or moral evil, but a voluntary estrangement from 
God ? As the holiness, or highest goodness, and the true welfare 
of the creature are found in love toward God, and in being loved 
of Him, is not evil, primarily, a turning away from God, — a 
denial of Him as the true good ? And may not the manifold 
forms of sin, — ingratitude, pride, selfishness, lawless desire, 
envy, enmity, malignity, — be traced to a wilful alienation from 
God, as their common, excuseless and inexplicable cause ? 

But God cannot be rejected as the Archetype and Fountain 
of all good, without being disliked or even denied as the source 
of being. The revolted creature finds a quarrel with the sense 
of his utter dependence. What was before a happy reliance is 
now an unwelcome sense of weakness. He would prefer to sub- 
sist by himself, and for himself. Pie w^ould fain be a central 
being, and other forms of being must be subservient to him. All 
his love is changed to selfish passion ; he cherishes other forms 
of being, not for their good, or as a divine handiwork, but for his 
own use and behoof. They must exist for him. That which 
will not serve his turn provokes his enmity ; and that which 
yields to him is wasted upon him. His departure from the true 
and imperishable Good makes him of necessity a consumer and 
a destroyer. 



142 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



But his warfare with the true welfare of others, and with the 
power that preserves him, is also a warfare upon himself. The 
laws of his own being are as much infringed upon as the prin- 
ciples of the common good. The passions he has kindled are 
palled with satiety, or they prey upon and derange his own 
powers and capacities. And unless we assume that all evil, or 
at least all the effects of evil, are only physical, we must recog- 
nize a disease of the soul ; in the way of analogy, though not of 
resemblance, the weakness and the strength of the revolted soul 
may be the weakness and the strength of its fever. We do not 
deny any principle of the divine judgments when we say the 
words of Wisdom maybe strictly true : " He that sinneth against 
me wrongeth his own soul ; all they that hate me love death." 

So much for the nature of evil in its worst form, as sin. And 
what is physical evil, or pain, but the anguish of a created life 
whose law is violated or its strength impaired — the wail of mor- 
tality — -the cry of warning or the despairing shriek that notes 
our subjection to decay and death ? It is an old saying that 
what is imperishable is impassible. This is true, with a single 
qualification. The divine nature suffers grief for man, freely, as 
a gift of love. The pang is not a violence from without ; it is 
the throbbing of the heart of God. The very affection which 
moves to pity is one of the highest forms of life ; it more than 
heals the wound it makes. And if saints and angels share the 
divine sorrows over erring creatures, they also share the divine 
nature ; for God is Love ; this emotion that " never faileth " may 
be more than any thing else the sign of their exemption from 
decay. But the pain that comes not from love, finds no sup- 
port. It is the token of frailty, the herald of death. 

But not only the nature of evil shows its weakness — it has 
no substance. It subsists only by its connection with good, and 
as a warfare against it. It is not an entity. It has no inde- 
pendent being. And no creature was originally bad. Even the 
Persians knew how to say that " evil, according to the oracle, 
is more frail than non-entity."-^ And many of the old philoso- 

1 Zoroaster, or the Theurgists, Anc. Fragments, p. 161, N. York, 1836. 



THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 



143 



pliers and of the early Fathers regarded evil and being as natu- 
rally opposite. Plato speaks of God as the essential Being, who 
truly is and of matter, as that which is not chiefly, indeed, 
because it is subject to change and decay, as Cicero remarks;^ 
but probably also because it was with him the principle of evil. 
And accordingly Proclus, one of the later Platonists, says: "Evil 
effects something, indeed, among beings ; but the effective power 
of evil is evident from this, that it is corruptive of every thing. 
For that evil is this is demonstrated by Socrates in the Republic- 
who very properly says that the good of every thing is that 
which is preservative of every thing, on which account all things 
desire good ; for existence to all things is thence derived ; just 
as non-existence and corruption are on account of the nature of 
evil." And again : " It is impossible for that which does not 
desire good, to rank among beings. For on account of this de- 
sire all beings are produced and exist, and from this derive their 
salvation [preservation]. " Again, speaking of the dependence 
of evil ; " All life is essentially power ; but evil, being produced 
through a power which is not its own, is contrary to good, em- 
ploying its own power for the purpose of resisting good. And 
the greater, indeed, the inherent power is, the greater are the 
energies and the works of evil ; but they are less when the 
power is less."^ To the same purpose says Epictetus : "As the 
line is not drawn [in the race-course] in order that those who 
run should depart from it, so evil nowhere exists as a proper 
nature."^ Athanasius says : " Those things are, which are good; 
those things are not, which are evil. And good things have 
being, because their patterns are in God, who truly is ; but evil 
things have not being, because, nothing in themselves, they are 

1 To bvro)^ bv. 2 

3 Xihil Plato putat esse, quod oriatur et intereat, idque solum esse, quod sem- 
per tale sit, Tuscul. Quaest. 1. 1, c. 24. Compare Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis 
Phil. 1. 3, § 69; — Plotinus, Emiead. III. 1. 6, c. 7, p. 310: "Matter may -nith 
propriety be called non-existence;" — Porphyry, Sentent. ad Intell. c. 21, p. 
226: true non-existence ; " — Dionysius Areop., and his interpreters, Maxiraus 
and Pachymeres (Cudworth, Intell. System, III. 181, 182, Mosheim's Dissert.); 
— Boethius, Quomodo substantitE bonte sint. 

4 On the Subsistence of Evil, pp. 81, 77, 160 ; Taylor's translation. 
6 Enchirid. c. 27. 



144 



EYIL TEMPORARY. 



the fictions of men." " As a substance, and in its own nature, 
evil is nothing; the Creator hath made all things."-^ Again: 
" Evil things are not entities ; but good things are entities, since 
they are of God, who truly is."^ And Basil : "Evil is no real 
thing, but a mere negation."^ Gregory Nyssen uses very simi- 
lar language. And Augustine, replying to the Manicha^ans, 
says : " Who is so blind as not to see that evil is that which is 
opposed to the nature of a thing? And by this principle is your 
heresy refuted ; for evil, as opposed to nature, is not a nature. 
But you say that evil is a certain nature and substance. But 
what is opposed to nature, struggles against it and would destroy 
it. So that which exists tends to make non-existence. For 
nature itself is only what is understood, after its kind, to he some- 
thing. Hence as we speak of the being (esse) of anything as 
its essence and substance, so the ancients, wanting these terms, 
used the word nature. If then you will consider the matter, evil 
consists in this very thing — a defection from being, and a ten- 
dency to non-being." Again : " How can that which you regard 
as the principle of evil (summum malum) be opposed to nature 
and substance, if it be itself a nature and a substance ? It could 
thus only destroy its own being ; and if it should accomplish 
this, it would indeed attain the supremacy of evil (perveinet ad 
summum malum). But this can hardly be; for you say it not 
only is, but is eternal. But so long as it exists, it can not be the 
supreme evil."^ Again: "Things are corrupted (or wasted) by 
being deprived of good. But if deprived of all good, they will 
not be at all. For if they shall be, and can not be corrupted, 
they will be better, because they will remain incorruptible. 
. . . . Hence all things that are are good. The evil, then, 
of which I was seeking the origin, is not a substance ; for if it 
were, it would be a good." ^ And even in the terrible imagery 

1 Oratio contra Gentes, cc. 4, 6, 0pp. I. 4, 6. 

2 OvK bvTa yap egtl tu Kam- ovra 61 ra Kokh, tTrecST^irep utco tov ovtoq deoii 
yeyovaai. De Incar. Verbi, c. 4. 0pp. I. 51. 

3 HomiL, Quod Deus non est auctor malorum, c. 5 ; compare Sermo I. De 
Virtute et Vitio, See also Ephraem, Adv. Hsreses, Sermo xxviii. 

"* *l'vcig 6h Kadag ova Ictlv. Orat. Catech. c. 28 : comp. c. 6. 

5 De Moribus Manich. c. 1, ^ 2, 8. 6 Confess. 1. 7, c. 12. 



THE FRAILTY OF EVIL. 



145 



©f Gregory the Great we discover lingering the same sentiment : 
" He [the lost sinner] dies, and at the same time lives ; he tends; 
toward nothingness, and yet subsists ; he is ever coming to an 
end, yet is never extinct." ^ 

This notion of Evil as the antithesis not only of Good but also 
of Being, is contained in the scholastic phrase : " All being is 
essentially good (in ente non deficit bonum)." The notion may 
indeed be easily perverted from its true application, as when it 
is affirmed that evil is only negative, physical, or consists in mere 
imperfection.^ It still remains true that he who says to Evil: 
" Be thou my good," may find a fearful penalty of guilt in the 
transition from the glorious light of being, to the eternal dark- 
ness in which there is no being. 

These views may be sustained by a few passages from modern 
Christian writers. Says Dr. Goodwin : " The whole creation is 
built upon a quagmire of nothing, and is continually ready to 
sink into it and to be swallowed up by it ; which maketh the 
whole, or any part of it, to shake and quiver when God is angry. 
The foundation of the creature's changeability to sin (when as at 
first made near to holy) is by our divines put upon this : that we 
being made out of nothing, are apt to verge and sink into nothing, 
and so fall towards it in sinning. And truly, sin is a great leap, 
or fall rather, and tottering towards it ; and we may view our 
own nothingness most by it ; and did not God, in the just act of 
our reeling towards sinning, put a stop and uphold our beings, 
we should fall to nothing." ^ And Nitzsch, on the penalty of 
death, remarks : " Original principles are in themselves free from 
mortality — au-rjpLOL ai yeviaeLg. It is only sinners who have, as it 
were, invited, incited, and importuned death. However dark 
these doctrines are, still it is certain that the question does not 
merely concern spiritual death, but turns on the bias of evil for 
non-being, and the desire to frustrate and violate all existence." 

1 Moralia, 1. 15, c. 17. 

2 Leibnitz, Th^odic^e, § 29, sq. ;— King, Origin of Evil, c. 4, § 9 : " The crea- 
ture is bom of God, as the most perfect Fathei', and of nihility, as of a mother, 
which is imperfection itself." 

8 Of the Creatures, etc., b. 1, c 3, § 2. 
13 



146 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



Again : " If the soul, being dependent on its Creator, does not 
possess absolute immortality, this at least is certain, that it has 
been created and constituted to participate in eternal life ; and 
if it must lose its true self-life in proportion as it is deserted by 
truth, love, and blessedness, it follows that as sin increases, the 
soul faces destruction in hell or its death (Matt. x. 28 ; Eev. xx. 
15 J." ^ "Truly," says Dr. Miiller, "sin is nothingness (as the 
Hebrew term 'ilj^ expresses it) and misery ; but it does not im- 
mediately manifest itself, as such, at every point of human exist- 
ence, in its earthly development; but only in its result is this first 
of all fully seen. But the divine judgment removes the result to 
the end of the world's history." Again : " Evil is not merely at 
variance with the good, but also with itself ; if the good has one 
enemy, the evil has two, the good and the eviL This contradic- 
tion of the evil against itself has, besides the exhibited ethical 
psychological signification, still a peculiar metaphysical moment 
[import]. If there belongs to the evil no existence independent 
of God, of the absolute good, it nevertheless incessantly strives 
after the same, and we have seen that the evil is just nothing 
else than this turning away from God, this languishing after 
separate independency. In the abandonment of the creature to 
evil, it factually [practically] denies its being created by God ; 
it will not have the ground of its existence in God, but it will 
live, act, and enjoy itself as if it had existence in itself, and were 
its own lord. How now if God should allow it to succeed in this 
endeavor, if He should separate himself from it, just as it does 
from Him ? The moment of such an emancipation of the creature 
from God were equally that of its sinking into non-entity ; for it 
is not able for a single moment otherwise to exist than in the 
hand of God, than his mancipium, be its will moreover good or 
bad. . . . Thus a parasitic plant strives to suck out all the 
juices from the organic body, in order to draw them into its own 
perverted, poisonous process of development ; but just as it 
attains the end of its endeavor, it has also found its own death." ^ 

1 Christian Doctrine, H 121, 122. ^ Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 260, 451, 452. 

Compare K. Kothe, Theologische Etliik, h 490, cited below, p. 159. 



THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. THEISM. 

§ 3. THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. 



U7 



It will here be asked : If Evil is both needless and frail, why- 
does it exist at all ? Various objections will be urged to the 
distinction we allege, between temporary and eternal evil ; as 
also between the permission and the ordination of it. Thus 
Whately : " The main difficulty is not the amount of evil that 
exists, but the existence of any at all. Any, even the smallest 
portion of evil, is quite unaccountable, supposing the same amount 
of good can be obtained without that evil ; and why it is not so 
attainable, is more than we are able to explain. And if there be 
some reason we can not understand why a small amount of evil 
is unavoidable, there may be, for aught we know, the same 
reason for a greater amount. I will undertake to explain to any 
one the eternal punishment of the wicked, if he will explain to 
me the existence of the wicked; — if he will explain why God 
does not cause all those to die in the cradle, of whom He foresees 
that when they grow up they will lead a sinful life. The thing 
can not be explained ; and it is better to rest satisfied with know- 
ing as much as God has thought fit to teach us, than to try our 
strength against mysteries which but deride our weakness."^ 
Another writer says : " This moment, as much as millions of 
years hence, is part of the infinite government of one and the 
same God. . . . And where it can not be made evident that 
a present law or fact or mode of divine government has any 
thing transient or mutable about it, but it appears on the other 
Land to rest on the essential nature of things, then we properly 
infer perpetuity." ^ 

Confessing that evil is a proper mystery, we have already 
endeavored to show that the notion of eternal evil throws a bur- 
den, upon human faith, which that of temporary evil does not. 
And to the witnesses before cited, we may here add Lactantius 
himself, who reasons thus : " Wisdom stands or falls with a 
liability to evil, else there could be no trace of virtue in man, 
which essentially consists in bearing and overcoming the bitter- 

1 Scr. 'Rev. of a Future State, c. 8. Compare H. L. Jlnnsel, Limits of Re- 
ligious Thought, as cited and replied to in our " Rights of Vv'rong," pp. 17-24. 

2 1. M. Tost, New Jjigiander, Feb., 185G, pp. 140, 141; comp. pp. 148, 149. 



148 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



ness of evil. Thus, by the removal of a small amount 
(exiguum compendium) of evil, we might lose the greatest, the 
true and only good."^ And in like manner the language of 
Paul seems to suggest a real distinction between temporary and 
eternal evil : " For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
And when he adds that " the things which are seen are temporal," 
we may at least entertain the supposition that such is Evil. 

Yet the distinction of evil as much or little, lasting or fleeting, 
will be almost worthless if it can be derived from no principle. 
Evil is essentially that which ought not to be. How, then, can 
its actual temporary existence be wrong, and its eternal exist- 
ence forbidden ? This brings us to the question whether God 
permits evil ? If so, how, and why ? 

The permission of it is often altogether denied. Plutarch 
thinks it a thousand times better to deny the power of God than 
to regard Him as permitting evil.^ A late writer says that 
God's creatures have chosen evil " without consent or sufferance 
of His, in opposition to his nature, His will, and His express 
command, infinitely in opposition to Him. He did not passively 
suffer it to be so, when He could and might have prevented it." 
" Moral evil is altogether and only abomination to Him. He 
can not approach it, can not 'permit it, in any sense, can not 
even recognize its existence, except for ever to resist and repel 
it."^ And another: "It is not by His warrant, or prescription, 
or permission."^ And another: " God does not permit sin. He 
chooses it not, and He permits it not, as an essential part of the 
best possible universe. . . . God is in earnest, infinitely and 
immutably in earnest, in the purpose to root out and destroy the 
odious thing, that it may have no place amid the glory of His 
dominions." But this is supposed impossible, because " although 
God is infinitely willing to secure the existence of universal 
holiness, to the exclusion of all sin, yet such a thing is not an 

1 De Ira Dei, c. 13. 

2 Adv. Stoicos, c. 34. 

8 J. Young, The Mystery, or Evil and God, pp. 216, 238. 

< M. P. Squier, The Problem Solved, or Sin not of God, p. 135. 



THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. THEISM. 149 

object of power, and therefore can not be produced by omnipo- 
tence itself."^ 

Thus is the divine permission of sin denied on the one hand, 
by those who justly repudiate it as no part of God's plan. By 
others, who probably deny that sin is an intruder, the distinction 
between its permission and its ordination is not allowed. Thus 
Kant, in his essay on the " Failure of all the philosophical inves- 
tigations in Theodicy ; " and . Schleiermacher, who admits " no 
distinction between the causes which belong to the sphere of 
freedom and those which belong to the necessity of nature. If 
now sin is an act, and as such proceeding from the highest 
activity of causality in time, from freedom, it is also appointed 
by the absolute producing will of God." The admission of a 
finite free cause that may act counter to God's command, he 
regards as Manichseism.^ But it is well known that Schleier- 
macher, with all his devoutness, favored the Pantheism of 
Spinoza. 

These opposite parties agree in declining the distinction we 
have named. And if on the one side. Absolutism is consistently 
avowed, we see not why Dualism should not be confessed on the 
other side. It seems to us an evasion when Bledsoe tells us : 
*'We choose to impale ourselves upon neither horn of the 
dilemma. We are content to leave M. Bayle upon the one and 
M. Voltaire upon the other, while we bestow our company else- 
where. In plain English, we neither reply [that God is] un- 
willing nor unable [to prevent sin]."^ This plea, we think, is 
vain ; for if sin exists, and long subsists, despite not only of 
God's prohibition, but of His power to prevent it, it gains a 
proper victory over Him. He suffers the humiliation of a defeat, 
so long as evil intrudes and holds its place. Though its triumph 
be little and mean, it is real, and the divine sovereignty is at an 
end. 

We think it better, with Werdermann, who seems a man of 
sense and is bound to no system, to allow a permission of evi! 

1 A. T. Bledsoe, Theodicy, p. 352. 

2 Glaubenslehre, § 49, cited by Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 3«2. 
s Theodicy, p. 362. 

13* 



150 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



which does not compromise the divine integrity a permission, 
not moral and denoting God's complacence or sanction, but phys- 
ical. God freely grants the power to perform what He earnestly 
deprecates and absolutely forbids. The distinction is not only 
commonly recognized, but often practical. An upright and kind 
father, whose wayward son is fully resolved to defy his authority 
and quit the paternal roof, may furnish him with means ; which 
the boy may take as a sanction of his course, though in fact they 
betoken the father's authority no less than his concern and love. 
So God's permission, without sanction, of sin, denotes His power. 
Just because sin is an abandonment of the Lord of life, incurs 
death, and is an essential frailty, the physical permission of it 
indicates its moral prohibition. " Obey and live, sin and die,'* 
are equivalent expressions both of God's holiness and love. 
And sin not only exists, but subsists, under delay of penalty, 
strictly by divine sufferance ; not because it is mightier than 
God's power, or more cunning than His wisdom, but bi/ His for- 
bearance. He is neither invidious, nor fearful. His love is not 
needy, that He should suffer loss by the revolt of his crea- 
tures ; it is earnest, yet free. He can afford that they should quit 
his home, if they can afford it. His universe is wide enough, and 
His eternity long enough, so He need not hasten their doom. 
They may waste their strength in protracted rebellion, receiving 
God's gifts and enjoying His free sunshine, and He shall be rich 
and mighty as ever. Meanwhile He can turn the evil they do 
to good account, or turn them from it. Yet because he hates 
them not, their sin is a grief, which His love both creates and 
freely endures. Both halves of the truth are contained in Paul's 
statement, " What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to 
make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the 
vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction ? " The penalty of death 
might have been instantly executed upon sin, so it should have 
had not even a temporary subsistence, but should have perished 
in its very inception. Creative power might easily have replaced 

1 Nur in diesem sichtman ein, dass zwischen Zulassen, Erlauben, und "VVollen, 
m\ wahrer Unterscheid sey. — Tlieodicee, I. 165. 



THE PERMISSION OF EVIL. — THEISM. 



151 



all that sin thus destroyed. But power is shown no less in the 
tolerance of evil ; in bringing good out of it ; in allowing it to 
come to its height, and to spread itself like a green bay-tree, to 
perish in its full-blown frailty. And because God is love, and 
desires not the death of any, but readily gives to the sinner a 
space for repentance, He may display his power even more 
signally in a method of recovery than it would appear in bare 
acts of re-creation.^ A modern writer has well said: "The 
highest power only becomes the more perfect, from the fact that 
instead of acting with all-subduing violence, it operates in a 
determinate mode, as a spirit of holiness and love. On the 
other hand, this higher power may safely leave man free, for 
the very reason that it is omnipotent ; for it is the character of 
strength not to fear freedom ; and it is precisely because Omnip- 
otence governs the w^orld, that no infringement of universal 
order is to be apprehended from the personal self-subsistence of 
finite spirits."^ 

For " self-subsistence " we would say rather, as pertinent to 
our argument, revolt. And the reader at once perceives that 
our doctrine of the permission of sin looks to the denial of its 
eternity resulting from an event in time. If it could begin only 
at the hazard of an eternal conthuiance, its admission must 
involve the eternal counsels. It could not then exist merely by 
divine sufferance. It would then be established and permanent. 
It must then be invested, as a part of God's wealth, and our 
theological arithmetic will be viciously employed in reckoning 
the eternal interest that shall accrue therefrom. Even those 
who repudiate it, as no part of God's system, and who would 
fain eliminate or ignore it, wilL be painfully compelled to recog- 
nize it, and, though at a minimum valuation, to make the best 
of it. Thus Dr» Young, asking whether Eternity shall be 
" begloomed with evil for ever unconquered, unconquerable ?" — 

1 We hope to show hereafter (p. 426) that God's wrath, even though it destroy, 
is a sign and method of His love. See also Chalmers's sermon on " Fury not 
in God." 

2 Bockshammer, Freedom of the Will, p. 104, Kaufmann's trans. Compare 
Cudworth, Intell. System, 1. 3, c. 37, § 4; — Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 216. 



152 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



says : " The Universe shall contain a type of sin in its last results, 
— an image of the doom which is condensed in that tremendous 
word, perdition. The thought is unutterably affecting. Far, far 
without — not beyond the range of celestial vision, but not obtrud- 
ing upon it — there may be a dim and dark and mysterious 
phantasm ; the only speck in a universe of light, and too remote 
withal to cast upon it even the faintest shadow."^ Thus God's 
supposed necessity is reduced to the smallest possible measure, 
so it may be tolerated as part of His plan. The theology of 
evil, indeed, seems to die hard. With a marvelous inconsistency 
the notion is still retained, that sin, which is too hateful to exist, 
insomuch that many deny its reality, must somehow exist in 
order to be hated. Its character changes at once ; it ceases to 
be abhorred as fit only to die ; it acquires dignity as reduced to 
a divine service ; if it is evil, it is also good. 

Not so if it is limited and temporary. We may then say truly 
that it inheres in no principle, and finds no sanction. It is neither 
God's choice, nor His necessity. It is only an incident of His 
majestic forbearance. It lingers between life and death, being 
and not-being. It is transient, because transitional, and pertain- 
ing to no system. It is not of the Creator, but of the creature ; 
not of the Infinite, but of the finite ; not of the Eternal, — how 
can it attain to eternity ? Its inception and furtherance are with 
the creature. It is the scheme of finite beings ; they alone are 
its sponsors ; its fortunes and destiny are with them. Let them, 
in the perhaps ironical language of Scripture, receive it to their 
" everlasting habitations." " Its perpetuation is not of the strat- 
egy of the Eternal." " Sin and wrong are the method of other 
agents than God, whom He in the best time and way will 
reduce, and recover, or destroy." ^ 

§ 4. IS EVIL ONLY NOW ? 

But if Evil is strictly temporary, how does it happen that we, 
poor children of Adam, with a few fallen angels for sad company, 

1 The Mystery, p. 335. But compare pp. 175, 176, 289; and see the doctrine 
of a "minimum " abandon ^.d by Erbkam (above, p. 137, note). 
•■2 M. P. Squier, The Problem'Solved, pp. 243, 138. 



IS EVIL ONLY NOW? 



153 



have fallen upon the evil time ? Was sin unknown in the eter- 
nal past, until lately Satan became the Adversary of God and 
man ? And will the eternal future be a stranger to evil, save in 
the history of the now passing centuries ? Does Eternity culmi- 
nate, soon, by the restitution of this world from a solitary ingress 
and brief period of sin and woe ? Such questions are proposed, 
and with reason. "Are we sure," asks one, "this relation of 
evil as an efficient or incident of good is of limited date ? Are 
we sure we are especially fallen on that cycle in eternity when 
this relation is subsistent ? that a relation which has continued 
from we know not what awful date in the past eternity till now, 
is by some means to be within our own period of trial eternally 
cut off! " ^ And a very common conception of the Youth of the 
Universe is stated thus : " The supposition is plausible, if not 
probable, in the absence of all opposing evidence, that the pres- 
ent time is the dawn of the moral creation ; that the great work 
of peopling the material universe, if not the creation of the ma- 
terial universe itself, has but just commenced ; and that God is 
now laying, as it were, the foundation stones of that vast moral 
structure, which, in the coming ages of eternity, shall be magnifi- 
cent beyond conception." ^ 

If all this were true, the strangeness of our happening upon 
the crisis is no argument for the eternity of evil. If it is a soli- 
tary ulcer, distressing the whole creation of God, what signifies 
it that it comes to a head Here and Now, not Then and There ? 
The common theology of evil as begun and eternized not far nor 
long hence, is quite as answerable for our " bad eminence " in 
the eternal record, as any doctrine of temporary evil can be. 
Grant, for argument's sake, that the universe is just at the turn- 

iT. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 148. 

2 Theory of the Moral System, Hartford, 1855. To the sceptical question, 
Why God so long delayed to create the world ? it was once replied that He ever 
had eternity before him, and needed not to be in haste. The reply was simply 
as good as the objection. We can not well think of God as from eternity unoc- 
cupied, and recently beginning His work. Though all worlds are created, crea- 
tion itself may be from eternity, and without beginning. Yet Arnobius answered 
the cavU nobly, Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 75: "In infinitis perpetuis saeculis nihil om- 
nino dicendum est sero. Ubi enim fiiiis et initium nullum est, nihil prsematurum 
est, nihil tardum." 



154 



EVIL TEMPORARY. 



ing period of youth ; to conserve the ills of its childhood, for the 
benefit of its eternal manhood, is too obvious a Dualism to need 
refutation. Or has sin, after ages of unbroken peace with God, 
been thought of only just now, or attempted just here ? The 
puny experiment is too successful, if it lives on as the witness of 
an improved economy of the universe, of which itself shall have 
been the occasion. Is our earth a hospital, or a penitentiary, 
appointed to relieve the accumulating ills of a few past cycles ? ^ 
Why should the sick be immortal, if they are not healed ? or the 
vicious, if they are not reformed ? The common theories here 
are condemned as dualistic, by their own arithmetic, whether 
political or moral. From the guilt of one age they deduce a 
calamity for all ages, and startle us by their precocious aptness 
in the infinitudes. 

But with God for the enemy of evil, and the patron of good, 
we ought not to fear infinitudes. And, to give our own view of 
the destiny of evil the least advantage, we will allow that sin has 
occurred in a thousand worlds, and will recur in a thousand 
worlds yet to be. We will not confine its ravages to our own 
solar system, to any nebula, or cycle of aeons. And on the other 
hand we shall only ask the concession, that sin's ravages are 
confined to creatures on probation, to those who have not attained 
moral perfectness ; that only new created beings do fall, and that 
from their "first estate;" never from an exalted or glorified 
state. So far as the present argument is concerned, there may 
have been a thousand redemptive acts, scattered through the 
starry world and through the eternity in which God dwells — 
wonders of divine love which the angels of other systems desire 
to look into.^ Such a view will not vitiate our doctrine of the 

1 King's Origin of Evil, Law's note to c. 5, § 5. 

2 Before Him with whom a thousand years are as a day, the period of Christ's 
incarnation dwindles to a moment. " For any thing Ave can tell, the redemption 
proclaimed to us is not one solitary instance, or not the whole of that redemption 
which is by the Son of God, — but only our part in a plan of mercy, equal in 
magnificence to all that astronomy has brought within the range of human con- 
templation." — Chalmers, Astronom. Discourses, Disc. II. 

Modesty, perhaps, should make us more ready to believe this. The Scrip- 
tures are " above all careful, and for the best of reasons, not to make us metro- 



IS EVIL ONLY NOW? 



155 



divine grace, if we do not generalize it into a law of nature. It 
is a part of our ignorance on this whole subject, not to know how 
many of the new created families of beings do fall, or how many 
of those who fall are redeemed. All that we shall insist upon 
here is that Evil, though it may have infected a myriad of worlds, 
shall not appear to have trespassed where righteousness has been 
once established ; that it shall not appear as a self-subsistent power, 
an ever recurring danger in the same field of God's work, tan- 
talizing the divine wisdom and love ; that it shall appear only as 
incidental to the trial of new-created beings, and in every place 
as an exotic, and transient. Let it appear thus, even for ever, 
as a vagabond without a home in the universe, and for our argu- 
ment we are content. 

Is it said, then, that we have here a new doctrine of eternal 
Evil ? If, in ever succeeding periods, there is no security 
against it in the trial of created beings, does it not become a 
necessity or a vicissitude, dogging forever the progress of the 
universal welfare ? Does it not become an infinity, acquiring 
the very attribute by which it rivals the Divine Nature ? 

Let it be thus infinite. There is an infinitely infinite, to be 
offset against it. If there were but one world, from which many 
perished and a choice few attained eternal life, the ratio of evil 
to good would be that of finite to infinite. To multiply each 
term through eternity does not change the ratio. The endless 
succession of temporary evils marks the endless inauguration of 
eternal beatitudes. The eternity of the one is of no moment, 
compared with the compound infinity of the other. Before this 

politans, by showing that the transactions of our world are central, in their 
efficacy and value, to the universal government of God. It may please the 
vanity of our theology, to scheme a theory of salvation, wrought out on the 
earth and for it, magnificent enough to comprehend the whole contour of being 
and explain what effects are wrought by it on the peoples of Orion or the Milky 
Way. But if I am a little jealous of all such licentious assumptions, and 
stretches of theory, if they seem to me to exceed the measure of Christian 
modesty and sobriety, and, in fact, to be only theoretic figments, that withdraw 
our minds from the more solid and practical conceptions of Christianity, as a 
plan of grace wrought in the world and for it, and of course under the laws of 
effect that pei-tain to humanity itself, I hope to be excused." — Bushnell, Christ 
in Theology, p. 220. 



156 EVIL TEMPORARY. 

infinity of the second order^ the evil, ever fugitive and never 
advancing, dwindles to an infinitesimal, and may be disregarded 
in the computations of the celestial kingdom. 

And the nature of such evil shows it unworthy of the name 
of eternal. It has no continuity ; it is disjointed and fragment- 
ary. If it exists, it never subsists. Ever beginning, it never 
abides. The Adversary may be impersonated as a lion, roaring 
for hunger as much as for prowess, walking up and down the 
advancing creation," seeking what he may devour ; he can touch 
nothing upon which God has set His mark, — only the overplus 
of Plis productive energy; and as he devours, he dies. His 
every weapon pierces himself. The serpent cannot bruise the 
heel of the frailest creature, but he crushes his own head. His 
dominion of darkness can reach but a little way on this side 
Chaos, beclouding the dawn of some new creation with misty 
vapor, and cheating the faithless out of life. But the Sun of 
Righteousness shall melt the clouds away, the morning stars 
sing again together, and all the sons of God shout for eternal 

joy- 
In such a scheme, the supposed evil would only make display 
of its frailty, — never truly being, but eternally perishing. 

§ 5. THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH. 

It lies in the very idea of Faith, that man should be subject 
to trial. An ordeal implies hardship, or, at least, effort. Virtue 
that costs nothing is worth nothing. Hence, though we know 
no primary reason why pain should exist, it may be well 
employed as discipline, if it does exist. "We may even " glory 
in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and 
patience experience (doKLfirjv, triedness), and experience hope." 
" The trial of faith is much more precious than of silver and 
gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, that it may be 
found unto praise, and honor, and glory, at Christ's appearing." 

But it equally lies in the very idea of sin, that it ought not to 
exist ; though it be permitted as a mode of discipline, he who 
wars against it must wish it would end. If the example of a 



THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH. 



157 



dreadful penalty of sin is needed now, one must wish to out- 
grow the sad necessity. If we are told that "to breed the 
requisite horror and fear of sin, it may be that nothing else will 
suffice than the spectacle of its final, complete, and everlasting 
perdition — nothing less than the frightful exemplar of an im- 
mortal soul in immortal ruin,"^ — we answer: Faith can only 
suffer eternal agony, if such an exhibition is indispensable. 
And if we say that the saints can endure, and profit by, the ex- 
hibition, that is simply a romance of faith ; true victory there is 
none. 

There can be no triumph of faith, if evil is unconquerable ; 
and it is unconquerable, if its extirpation would impair the wel- 
fare of the world, or bedim the glory of God. Goodness may 
be mighty enough, and faith may be strong enough, for an im- 
mortal battle ; but the strength that needs eternal provocation, is 
weakness. And to Omnipotence alone can eternal warfare — 
and only to Him a warfare with dependent creatures — be matter 
of unconcern ; not even to Him, as a God of love. To all faith 
of finite beings, warfare must be transient, that they may have 
rest. In an immortal life, they may achieve many victories, 
and celebrate many triumphs ; loftier triumphs as the conquered 
evil shall be less actual, and the contest nearer the great white 
throne. But each contest must be terminable, and one of the 
earliest victories— -perhaps the very first real one, by which one 
becomes an heir of the kingdom-— must ensure all that remain. 
There must be such a triumph, over fightings without and fears 
within, else there can be no " full assurance of faith ; " else one 
can never say, " I have fought the good fight, I have finished 
my course, the crown is laid up for me." 

It is thus essential to the very idea of a Triumph of Faith, 
that time should be measured off from eternity, as a period of its 
trial. And without this there can be no Hope. These are both 
transitional virtues ; there is a greater, — the bond of perfectness, 
— the Love that courts not ever changing evil, but whose home 
is eternity. 

I New Englander, Feb. 1856, p. 126. 
14 



158 



EVIL TEMPOKARY. 



We need scarcely add that if our doctrine of Evil be true, it 
gives us a valid Theism. 

But are not we romancing? The Law and the Testimony 
must answer. But we may introduce that argument with the 
following passage from one of our most considerate writers : 

" When once this weighty question of the after life has been 
opened, and when it shall have come into the hands of well- 
informed biblical interpreters, a controversy will ensue, in the 
progress of which it will be discovered that, with unobservant 
eyes, we and our predecessors have been so walking up and 
down, and running hither and thither, among dim notices and 
indications of the future destinies of the human family, as to 
have failed to gather up or to regard much that has lain upon 
the pages of the Bible, open and free to our use. Those who, 
through a course of years, have been used to read the Scriptures 
unshackled by systems, and bound to no conventional modes of 
belief, such readers must have felt an impatience in waiting — 
not for the arrival of a new revelation from Heaven, but of an 
ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has so long 
been in our hands. 

" Thus the future Methodism, as we assume, will feel the 
need of, and will acquire for itself, under pressure of the most 
urgent motives, an incontrovertible exposition of the Scripture 
doctrine of the future administration of justice ; but then it will 
not make this acquisition as if it could be held as an insulated 
dogma ; for whatever is further ascertained on this ground, will 
come to stand in its true relationship to much beside, which, in 
the course of the same argument, will have started to view, as 
the genuine sense of the inspired books. The doctrine of future 
ptmishment, as a belief drawn from Scripture, and so drawn as 
to dissipate prevalent illusions, and to spread on all sides a 
salutary and effective alarm — such a belief will take its place 
in the midst of an expanded prospect of the compass and inten- 
tion of the Christian system. 

" The past Methodism was far from being a message of wrath, 
proclaimed by men of fierce and fanatical tempers : — it was a 
message of joy, hope, and love ; and it made its conquests as 



THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH. 



159 



such, notwithstanding those bold and unmeasnred denunciations 
against sin which it so often uttered. And so it will be witli the 
future Methodism ; and although it will rest itself upon a labori- 
ously obtained belief concerning the " wrath to come " — a belief 
that will heave the human mind with a deep convulsive dread, 
yet, and notwithstanding this preliminary, the renovation which 
we look for will come in as the splendor of day comes in the 
tropics — it will be a sudden brightness that makes all things 
glad!" ' 

T- Isaac Taylor, Wesley and Methodism, pp. 289, 290. 

As pertinent to the discussions in this chapter, and for his expression respect- 
ing the sense of the term death, we may properly add here a few words from 
the " Theologische Ethik " of Dr. Kichard Kothe. He says: — 

" Evil can therefore be for God only an object of absolute negation, and his 
agency in respect to it only an absolute reaction against it for its complete re- 
raoval; which, as divine and absolute, must be absolutely efficient. This abso- 
lutely efficient, unconditioned, negative reaction of God against sin, is his^jJim- 
itive agency. Thus, in general, the conception of punishment as divine is, that 
it is the absolute and purely efficient reaction of God, on the side of his omnipo- 
tence, against sin, whereby he removes it absolutely. . . . Divine penalty is 
essentially divine negation of sin, divine reaction against it; and, as divine, 
simply absolute. It cannot relax until it has actually removed the sin. If the 
sinner does not separate himself from the sin, if he identifies himself with it 
Jinalhj, then the punishment is directed against himself, and fulfils the divine 
judgment upon sin in himself, by the abolishing of his own being. For, evil must 
'be done away absolutely, as certainly as it is opposed to God, at whatever cost. 
If the sinner will not cease from it, then must he share its doom; successfully 
mock God in his defiance, he can not. Thus divine retribution results at last 
in the annihilation of the sinner ; even by means of the evil impending over 
him as consequence of his sin. through and in it tlie divine punishment culmi- 
nates. This annihilation of the sinner — this death in the Kew 'i'estament 
sense — is accordingly the final aim of the divine punishment: and tlie neces- 
sary final result, lying in its very idea, of sin consistently and completely ful- 
filling itseif. . . . If punishment is executed completely,' then its consequence 
is ever the annihilation of the sinner himself. As punishment, that is, when it 
remains punishment and is not removed by forgiveness, it ever ends with the 
death of the sinner in this sense." 490.) 

Besides speaking of him "as a most excellent man and humble Christian." 
Dr. Schaf says: " We must assign to Kothe the very first place among the 
speculative divines of the present day. He surpasses even Kitzsch, Miiller, 
Dorner, Martensen, and Baur in vigorous grasp and independence of thought, 
and is iiardlj'- inferior in this respect to Schleiermacher." (Germany, c. 33. ) 
See also other accounts of him and of his *' 'i heological Ethics " in the Bibllo- 
ilieca Sacra. April, 1860, and a few added words in pp. 22, 23 of " The liiglits 
of Wrong," Avhere Ave have treated some of the above matters more fully. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT, 

" Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal 
life; and they are they which testify of me.'" 

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the question 
which we raise is not respecting the duration of future punish- 
ment, but respecting its nature. We are to show that exclusion 
from all life is a punishment, and that this is the revealed punish- 
ment of the lost. If it be so, then we may at once admit the 
words '"eternal," "everlasting," and similar phrases, used to 
indicate the duration of the final doom, as denoting an absolute 
eternity ; we shall waste no time in efforts to reduce their sig- 
nificance in the least. 

Nor shall we offer any new principles of interpretation. "We 
hold, indeed, that the obvious sense of words is, prima facie their 
true sense ; though the rule is worth little, since time and opinion 
may change even the obvious meaning of the plainest words. 
And we are far from being rigid literalists, as will appear in our 
reliance upon one or two rhetorical figures — tropes that may 
appear new to some readers because they are in fact so old and 
almost forgotten. The attempt to reinstate these methods of 
interpretation is part of the only system which we are willing to 
profess, — that of seeking the historical sense of the inspired 
words. 

§ 1. IS THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ASSUMED IN THE 

BIBLE ? 

What is the "everlasting life" revealed to mankind in the 
Gospel ? And what is the " death," from which that life is an 
eternal salvation ? Here, at the threshold of this discussion, we 



IS IMMORTALITY ASSUMED IN THE BIBLE? 161 



are told that the soul's immortality is assumed in the Bible, and 
that all the language of Scripture must be understood accordingly. 
" The immortality of the soul," says one, " is rather supposed, or 
taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." ^ The 
words in question are therefore referred to man's physical des- 
tiny, or they are taken to denote happiness or misery in an 
immortal destiny. The literal sense is commonly allowed in 
the Old Testament, and is supposed to be there exhausted in the 
account of temporal deliverances and destructions. The meta- 
phorical sense is supposed to predominate in the New Testament. 
In either case the Word of Life is no message of eternal exist • 
ence, — for man did not need that, — but simply of eternal well-^ 
being to those who believe in Christ. 

The silence of the Scriptures respecting man's natural immor- 
tality is commonly admitted, and converted into an implicative 
argument. The fact is denied by one late writer, who thinks it 
is expressly asserted of all mankind, in at least one passage, that 
" they cannot die any more." But he must then allow that the 
lost — the children of the Wicked one — are in the same passage 
said to " be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resur- 
rection from the dead," to be " equal unto the angels," and to be 
" the children of God." ^ This last resort to find a distinct state- 
ment of man's immortality in the Scriptures will only make their 

1 Tillotson, Sermons 100, 166. Compare Vmet, Miscellanies, pp. 217, 223. 

2 Luke, XX. 35, 36. J. H. Hinton, Athanasia, pp. 423-443. Compare B. 
Whitman, Letters to a Univ., p. 308 ; — H. Dodwell, Discourse on the Soul. — 
Mr. H. takes the expression, " to obtain that world and the resurrection from the 
dead," in the common sense of entering upon a future existence, and contends 
that the verb, " shall be accounted worthy" ( Kara^itodivreg) , does not denote 
moral fitness or worthiness, but simply the fortune or lot [rvyx^vetv) of living 
again. He cites Castalio, who offers no argument. For the non-ethical sense 
of the verb he cites Schleusner, who adduces ^lian, Var. Hist. 1. 12, c. 10. 
X aophon, Cyrop., 1. 2, c. 1; Diodor. Sic, 1. 19, c. 11; Heliodor, 1.1, c. 11; 
E;/':"*"etus, Enchir. c. 50; 1 Tim. v. 17; Heb. iii. 3; x. 29, and 1 Thes. i. 5, as 
examples. But in these passages the ethical sense, though not emphatic, is, we 
think, admissible. The mistake of Schleusner might easily arise from the com- 
plex sense of the verb. He is not supported by Wahl, Bretschneider, Passow, 
or Robinson. The same verb, or its root ui,i6u), also occurs in Luke xxi. 36 ^ 
Acts iv. 41; Luke vii. 7; Acts xv. 38; xxviii, 22, and 2 Thes. i. 11. 

14* 



162 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



silence more obvious. For none, we think, but the Universalist, 
will accept the writer's exposition. 

To divest the argument of its appendages, we should here say, 
the question is not respecting the after existence of the unsaved 
soul until the second death ; much less does it touch the immor- 
tality of the righteous. Nor has it to do with the passages sup- 
posed to intimate, or to imply, the immortality of all men in 
general, or of bad men in particular; but simply with the 
acknowledged fact, that such immortality is nowhere in the Bible 
stated, mentioned, spoken of, or alluded to, in proper terms. It 
never appears as a plastic element, in the language of the Scrip- 
tures. Neither such expressions as " to live for ever," '• to exist 
for ever," "never to die," "to be immortal," nor any equivalent 
expressions, are ever applied to the nature of the soul, or to the 
destiny of the lost. They are only applied to the destiny of the 
righteous. Our business is with the common view, that the 
immortality in question is silently assumed and taken for granted 
in the volume of Revelation. 

For argument's sake we will admit this ; and we will compare 
the scriptural treatment of this supposed implicit doctrine, with 
the scriptural treatment of another doctrine — that of the divine 
existence — which is undoubtedly taken for granted in the Bible, 
and with which the doctrine in question is often associated as one 
of the main pillars of religious truth. 

If, now, these two are the cardinal truths of religion, we should 
expect them to receive similar treatment, in the Revelation of 
the divine character and of human destiny. If one of these doc- 
trines is stated explicitly and categorically, we should expect the 
same of the other. If one of them is not directly stated, but is 
explicitly assumed, with frequent mention or allusion, we should 
expect the same of the other. If one is assumed implicitly and 
silently, — taken for granted as a doctrine clear past all doubt and 
all need of mention, we should expect the same of the other. 

What are the facts ? The divine existence is, indeed, never 
asserted categorically, or stated as a proposition. It is assumed 
as too clear for argument, — a first truth of the religious con- 
sciousness, to prove which would be preposterous. The Bible 



IS IM3I0RTALITY ASSUMED IN THE BIBLE ? 163 



never goes into debate with the atheist. His error is not to be 
treated with logic ; he may be the fool, who says in his heart : 
There is no God.-'- But so far from being tacitly assumed, the 
divine existence is named, and alluded to, and involved in various 
forms of speech, continually. It stands out, in bold relief, on 
almost every page of the Bible. It meets the reader at every 
turn. The silence of two short books respecting it has been 
deemed perplexing, impeaching their inspiration, unless it can be 
explained by special circumstances, and the exception prove the 
rule. One of these — the book of Esther — is a historical epi- 
sode ; the other — the Song of Solomon — is an allegory ; as 
such, they hold their places in the sacred canon. In every other 
book, the doctrine of God's existence is the apple of gold in the 
picture of silver. It is the Koh-i-noor, — the Mountain of Light 
that illumines the volume. It is the central truth, that makes 
the Bible a Discourse of God — the Word of God. It is the 
Shekinah that imparts sacredness to the Book, so that even scep- 
tics have approached it with awe, as standing on holy ground. 
And lest this one great truth should weary the devout reader 
with monotony, it appears in endlessly varying forms, in manifold 
names of the Divine Being and of His glorious attributes. And 
to arrest the attention and invite the study of reluctant men, the 
Bible yields a thousand expressions of the power, wisdom, and 
goodness, of God. If we strike out from the record all those 
passages which tell of His being and His works, we reduce the 
dimensions of the volume almost by half, we make it a book 
without sense or meaning, we exchange its radiant light for mid- 
night darkness. 

But if we expunge from the same book all those passages in 
Avhich the immortality of the soul is mentioned or expressly 
assumed, we leave the volume unchanged ; it remains as it was. 
It might have been written just as we have it, and the Revela- 
tion would have been just as complete as it is, if the sacred 

1 Intone passage (Heb. xi. 6) the existence of God is indirectly asserted; but 
the nature of faith is there the point at issue. In a few passages the existence 
of one God is asserted against the polytheist or the idolater. Our statement is, 
we think, stnctly correct. 



164 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



writers had conspired, with uniform consent, to avoid ail reference 
or allusion to that form of doctrine which is sometimes called one 
of the two cardinal truths of all religion. Olshausen says true : 
" The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the name are 
alike unknown to the entire Bible " (Comm. on 1 Cor. xv. 19, 20).^ 

Whence this contrast in the scriptural treatment of these 
ideas ? Will it be said that the immortality of the soul is suffi- 
ciently clear to man's unaided reason ? But that important truth 
ought to he surpassingly clear to human reason, which need not 
he named in a Revelation. And if we suppose the more obvious 
truth to be named less frequently hecause more obvious, then the 
soul's immortality should be a thousand fold clearer than the 
existence of God, nay, clearer beyond all comparison, as any 
large number is incomparably greater than zero. 

That the soul's immortality is so clear past all shadow or 
dream of doubt, will hardly be claimed. But granting, for argu- 
ment's sake, that it is too clear to need explicit mention in the 
Bible, we only encounter a new difiiculty. The Revelation 
which God should make to man, is of necessity given in man's 
language,- — not only in the single words of human language, but 
also in the current phrases and forms of human speech, so far as 
these are not false, or such as should be corrected or modified 
by the Revelation. But if the soul's immortality were so mar- 
velously clear a postulate of human reason, it must be a most 
cherished sentiment, and must give rise to many common ex- 
pressions — household words of natural theology. In fact, when- 
ever and wherever this doctrine has obtained, it has created 
various modes of expression that reveal the sentiment. Why, 
then, are these expressions altogether avoided or ignored in the 

1 We have taken the doctrine of God's existence as most apposite for onr 
comparison. Tlie freedom of the will is sometimes alleged as an admitted 
truth not expiicitly named in the Scriptures, and thus furnishing a case parallel 
with the doctrine in question. We reply, to say nothing of the liberty in Christ 
so often named in the New Testament, that the frequent command to " choose 
the good," to "refuse the evil," and the liice, does name a power of choice in 
the con:i-ete. And this is the only thing i-especting human freedom in which 
Christians are agreed ; they are scarcely agreed in this. But the immortality 
of the soul is named neither abstractly nor concretely. 



IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IN THE BIBLE? 165 

Bible? Why should the Holy Spirit — so ready to catch the 
language of the mortals who were to be taught the way of life — 
have failed to conform to their style of thought in this most im- 
portant item of their own immortal nature ? Why, if God has 
told men that they must enjoy or suffer for ever, has he never 
urged his invitation or his warning in the name of the immortal- 
ity he has given them ? Such a gift, surely, would be preemi- 
nently worthy of mention, to those who think and say so much 
of their supposed possession of the boon. Did He not desire 
them to be grateful for that which would so liken them to Him- 
self? 

Such are our difficulties, on the supposition that the soul's 
immortality is too clear to need mention in a Revelation. We 
meet only a new difficulty when we turn to facts, and consider 
the anxious doubts of men for thousands of years on this very 
subject. Because man was made ybr immortality, we find in the 
ruins of his fallen nature, through all history, some sentiment of 
the birthright he had lost. He finds himself subject to death ; 
but he also finds, or thinks he finds, some remnant within him 
of that which is too good to die. Hence that Question of Ages, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" But when this question 
came to be answered, and life and immortality were brought to 
light by One who did gain a signal victory over death, there 
was not a word uttered of that immortal nature respecting which 
there had been so much talk. He who had " the words of eter- 
nal life," never said that all men were to live, or to exist, for 
ever. He never spoke of the life which he gave, as an attribute 
or quality of some other essential life which they already pos- 
sessed. 

It becomes, then, at least a fair question, whether the " taking 
for granted " of man's immortality is not extra-scriptural, — an 
assumption out of the Bible, and foreign to it. 

§ 2. IS THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL IMPLIED IN THE 
LANGUAGE OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

The inferential argument for immortality divides itself into 
two parts, — general and special: 1st, That which deduces the 



166 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



immortality of all human souls, from two or three expressions of 
Scripture ; 2d, That which infers the immortality of the wicked 
from the passages that speak of their eternal punishment. We 
now consider the first. 

1. The creation of man in the divine image (Gen. i. 26, 27), 
which is afterwards made the solemn sanction of the law against 
murder (Gen. ix. 6), is taken to denote his exalted nature, in an 
immortal destiny. So likewise the expression, " man became a 
living soul " (Gen. ii. 7). This view is supported by a common 
translation of the passage in one of the Apocryphal Books (Wis- 
dom, ii. 23): "For God made man incorruptible, and to the 
image of his own eternity mada he him ; " also by the form of 
the Hebrew oath : " As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth " 
(1 Sam. XX. 3). 

To all this we reply (1.) The creation in the divine likeness 
no more proves man's absolute immortality, than it proves his 
eternal preexistence, his omniscience, or his possession of any 
other divine attribute. And as for the value of his existence, 
which makes murder the greatest of crimes, we think we have 
shown that is not enhanced by the contingency of eternal sorrow. 
The true sense of the passage in the book of Wisdom also favors 
this view: " God made man for immortality (ctt' u(pdapcLa)} and 
to the image of his own nature (IdLorTjTog) ^ made lie him. But 
by the envy of the devil death came into the world." (2.) The 
phrase " a living soul " is put in express contrast with " a quick- 
ening [life-giving] spirit," in 1 Cor. xv. 45. The same Hebrew 
phrase also in Gen. i. 20, 30, and a still stronger phrase in Gen. 
vii. 22, is applied to brute animals. It manifestly denotes simply 
a "living creature." (3.) The asseveration, "As the Lord 
liveth and as my soul liveth," denotes rather man's capacity and 
hope of life, than his destiny thereto. It indeed ratifies a cove- 
nant ; but from Genesis to Malachi, Life is the main subject o^ 
contract between God and man ; forfeited by man in every 
engagement, and at length given as a gratuity, by Him who 

1 "In spem immortalitatis creavit." Grotius and Calovius, in loc. 

2 The true reading, instead of uidLOTrjToq ; see Lambertns Bos, Breitinger, 
Grabe, Mill, Holmes and Parsons, the Vulgate and other Latin versions. 



IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IN THE BIBLE? 



167 



alone is to be trusted, or can render others trustworthy, in an 
act of Redemption. 

2. From the fact that man did not die at once when he had 
incurred the threatened penalty : " In the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 17), it has been inferred 
that the term " death " is not to be taken in a literal sense, and 
does not forbid, but rather implies, an endless existence. For 
" nothing is deadlier than death ; " and if that does not kill, 
what does ? In support of this view it is thought that the ex- 
pressions in Deuteronomy (xxx. 15, 19), where life and death 
are called " good and evil," " blessing and cursing," denote that 
death and pain are synonymous. It agrees with this view that 
physical death is now commonly regarded as a debt of nature ; 
though this a plain departure from the language of nearly all 
the symbols of the Church. 

This argument, though derived from the threatened penalty 
of sin, is of generic application, and deserves notice here ; the 
more so as it involves the general tenor of scripture language on 
the subject. 

The turning point of the argument is that man did not literally 
die on the very day of his transgression ; and God's veracity 
must be saved. But the tri-partite division of death as temporal, 
spiritual, and eternal, will hardly save God's veracity. For 
neither temporal nor eternal death were inflicted on that day ; 
and spiritual death cannot be strictly a penalty of sin. Man's 
insensibility respecting his fallen condition makes him even hap- 
pier in his carnal enjoyments. His continuing to sin cannot be 
his punishment. And if spiritual death denote the loss of higher 
good, a loss not felt, or a lost capacity for good, what is that but 
the beginning of a real death ? ^ 

There are two interpretations of the phrase, "in the day," 
that require passing notice. (1.) It is compared with the ex- 

1 The notion of spiritual death held bv some mystic writers makes it hardly 
different from the loss of immortality. Thus Wm. Law, Spirit of Prayer, 
Part II: " Wonderful it is to a great degree, that any man should imagine that 
Adam did not die on the day of his sin, because he had as good a life left in 
him as the beasts of the field have." 



168 



THE SCRIPTUHAL AEGmiENT. 



pression in 2 Pet. iii. 8, 9, and is thus extended to cover the 
thousand years within which man did actually die. The chiei 
merit of this view is its recognition of God's long-suffering, 
whereby he delays without falsifying his judgments. (2.) " In 
the day" is supposed to mean "in the case;" q. d. "If thou 
eatest, thou shalt die."^ This sense is perhaps admissible; yet 
we think it not proven, nor required. 

The most natural and best sustained interpretation is, we 
think, that which supposes Adam to have been judicially and 
virtually dead, in the day that he sinned. He was then under 
sentence of death, — a subject, an heir, a son of death. Life 
was forfeit. If he should live on for a day or even for an hour, it 
was a respite under condemnation, a delay of the execution. If 
he should live on for evei-, that must be by a rescue, a redemp- 
tion, an act of amnesty, a divine gratuity. Short of this, the 
debt incurred must be paid ; he must, at some time, die ; whether 
soul and body together, or by instalments of a first and second 
death, it signified little. De minimis non curat lex. Death 
loves to take usury, as well as victims ; why should he demand 
instant payment, now that he was secure of his prey ? 

This interpretation is no novelty. In rhetoric, it might be 
called a prolepsis, an anticipation of the future as already present. 
It is one of the commonest figures of speech. Thus, when one 
is falling from a precipice, or has taken deadly poison, or has 
provoked a mortal enemy, or has committed a capital crime, we 
say : " He is a dead man ! " nor do we take back our words, 
though he should happen to live on yet many days. Just so 
said the affrighted Egyptians, when the angel of death had 
smitten their first-born : " We be ail dead men ; " and the 
trembling Israelites, when the troop of Korah was destroyed : 
" Behold, we die ; we perish ; we all perish." And God himself 
employs similar language in addressing the presumptuous 
Abimelech : " Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman 
which thou hast taken." 

2 '^y^^ pro $i ponitur (si ea vesceris), ut alibi ssepe. — Castalio. See Poole's 
Synopsis. 



IS IMMORTALITY IMPLIED IN THE BIBLE? 



169 



And a very similar phrase occurs in two parallel passages. 
Thus Pharaoh says to Moses : " Get thee from me ; take heed 
to thyself, see my face no more ; for in that day Ihou seest my 
face, thou shaltdie" (Exod. x. 28). Yet no Egyptian would 
think the king faithless to his threatening, if Moses, incurring 
the penalty, had, under sentence, long waited for death. Still 
more in point is the passage in 1 Kings ii. 36, 37, where Solomon 
gives charge to Shimei respecting the tenure of his once forfeited 
life : "It shall be that on the day thou goest out, and passest 
over the brook Kidron, thou slialt know for certain that thou 
shalt surely die." Who supposes that Shimei, forfeiting his life 
anew in pursuit of two fugitive servants, flying from Jerusalem 
to Gath and from Gath to Achish, must be arrested, tried, and 
executed, all on the very day of his trespass, to make good the 
threat of Solomon ? His last words tell his evident meaning : 
" Thy blood shall be upon thine own head." And the famous 
tautology, " dying thou shalt die," which so many take to mean 
" dying thou shalt not die," is here shown to signify the certainty 
of death and not its vitality.^ 

And the early versions of the Bible, and many comments upon 
it, also support this exegesis. The Greek of Symmachus renders 
the phrase : " Thou shalt be mortal." ^ Likewise the Syriac, 
which is approved by Jerome and Grotius.^ The Arabic 
renders it : " Thou shalt deserve to die." ^ The Targum of 
Jonathan : " Thou shalt be subject to death." ^ Others under- 
stand it of immediate death, which was averted by repentance.^ 
And others still : " The phrase, Thou shalt die, does not signify 
the fact of dying, but its necessity and desert." ' Vatablus says : 

1 The language used by Solomon is the same with that in Gen. ii. 17, except- 
ing the phrase " thou shalt know for certain; " which makes no diflerence; for 
Shimei knew his danger on the fatal day no more certainly than before. The 
circumlocution is intensive. 

2 QvTjTog emj ; approved by Knapp, Chr. Theol. § 74. So Cahen, in loc. 
s " Mortalis eris." * " Mereberis mori." (See Walton's Polyglott.) 

5 "Reus eris mortis." So Nachmanides, and Isidor. Pelusiot. 1. 3, ep. 252. 

6 " Statim morieris ; dicuntque eum mox fuisse moriturum, nisi poenitentiam 
egisset." Hebrai in Paulo Fagio. (Poole's Synopsis.) 

7 Illud, morieris, non significat actum moriendi, sed necessitatem et debitum. 
Cornelius h Lapide, Boirfrerius, Tiiinus Poole's Synopsis. So Anselm. 



170 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



" Thou slialt be subject to death, both of body and soul." ^ And 
Fagius adds that the Hebrews deny not this two-fold death. 
Tirinus remarks : " Say rather that Adam then began to die ; 
that is, by a lingering death of inward wasting and decay." ^ 
And the sense we have given is sanctioned by Dr. Miiller, in 
his able work on the Christian Doctrine of Sin, II. 319, 320. 

The figure of prolepsis is of too common occurrence in the 
Bible to be overlooked. It will be further considered when we 
have done with the passage in hand. There are two remaining 
reasons why this threat of death cannot imply man's immortality. 
1. The advance of geological science has proved that animals 
had lived and died for thousands of years before the creation of 
man. Did Adam not know of their mortality, when he was told 
that he might die ? And if he did, must he not understand by 
death just such an expiring and decay as he saw among the 
brutes around him ? Or even if he had learned to distinguish 
between soul and body, how could he infer the immortality of 
the former, when the sentence came to be pronounced upon him : 
" Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return ? " Was he 
fairly treated, if that was only the prelude of death, and if, with- 
out a word of express warning, he was still liable to endless 
woe ? May we not well say with John Locke : " It seems a 
strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest 
and directest words, that by ' death ' should be meant eternal 
life in misery."^ 

2. The execution of the sentence indicates any thing rather 
than man's immortality. " And now, lest he put forth his hand, 
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever " 
(Gen. iii. 22). How can we think that this exclusion from life 
is exhausted in the death of the body, when the description of 
paradise regained, which forms the last chapter of Revelation, 
tells us once more of the " tree of life " whose leaves are " for 
the healing of the nations ? " 

1 Obnoxius eris morti, turn corporis, tnm nnimse. 

2 Vel (licas eum tunc incepisse mori; nempe longa ilia phthiseos seu internal 
corruptionis morte. So Clarius. 

3 Reasonableness of Christianity, § 1. Compare his " Resurrectio et quae 
sequuntur:" "Taking it then for evident that the wicked shall die and be 
extinguished at last," etc. (Life by King, pp. 316-322, Bohn'g ed.) 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



171 



We need not here enter into the controversy whether man 
would have had physical immortality if he had not sinned. It is 
all one to our argument whether the fruit of the tree of life had 
ambrosial virtue to sustain immortal life, or was only the sacra- 
ment of peace between God and man. We prefer to believe 
that the sinless man would have suffered no dissolution, but 
would have exchanged the psychical for the spiritual body by a 
developing process of his unimpaired nature.^ 

Equally good for our exegetical argument are the concessions 
adduced in our examination of the theodicies, that, if there had 
been no Redemption, Adam w^ould have utterly perished. To 
the same purpose also will apply the frequent remark, that " God 
in compassion provided that he who was to be wretched should 
not be for ever wretched." This is commonly said with respect 
to the bodily death of Adam ; but the argument is just as good 
a i-eason why the soul should not subsist in eternal misery. 

§ 3. THE GENERAL TENOR OF SCRIPTURAL LANGUAGE RE- 
SPECTING man's DESTINY. 

Before we examine the special argument for the immortality 
of the wicked, we shall consider the meaning of that whole class 
of expressions which refers to the destiny of the righteous and 
the wicked respectively. Are " life " and " death," and other 
like terms, to be taken in a metaphorical sense whenever they 
look beyond the veil that divides time from eternity, or do they 
retain their common meaning ? 

1 So the Church Symbols. And " quidam Hebraei sic : Tunc incipies esse 
mortalis ; et statuunt hominem non moriturum fuisse, si non peccasset." Poole, 
Synopis, in loco. And Fagius: If Adam had not sinned, he would, by eating 
of the tree of life, have prolonged his life for many years, until by degrees he 
should be transfoi-med into immortality." 

- Menochius. Fagius says: "It was the mercy of God that drove the man 
from Paradise." And Bp. Patrick: "Many of the ancient Fathers looked upon 
tl;e expulsion of Adam from Eden as a merciful dispensation, that man might 
not be perpetuated in a state of sin." See Theophilus, Ad Autol. 1. 2, c. 36; — 
Irenajus, Adv. HjEres, 1. 3, c. 37; — Tertullian, Adv. JIarciou, 1. I.e. 22; — 
Methodius, De Eesur. pp. 28-5, 286, 315 ; — Novatian, Piegula Fidel, c. 1; — Epi- 
phanius, Contra Hceres. 1. 2, tom. 1, c. 23; — Basil, Deus non auctor malorum. 
See also Abp. King, Origin of Evil, c. 4, § 9 ; — Paradise Lost, xi, 57-62. 



172 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



It is not denied that these terms are sometimes used in a trop- 
ical sense ; for what human words are not ? Language would 
not be a buoyant, living vehicle of thought, if its words did not 
sometimes burst the bonds of their literal sense. Yet language 
would be mere cloudland, a baseless fabric of visions, if its com- 
monest words did not commonly hold their literal sense. This 
is the very root from which words derive their life ; sundered 
from it, they perish. Like the kite that soars heavenward be- 
cause it is held earthward, they must confess their origin in 
matter, or return to the dust whence they were taken. 

At the outset of this examination we notice the fact that "life" 
and " death " are the terms most frequently used to represent 
the respective destinies of men. Life, as the condition of all 
blessing, is the greatest good ; death, as the privation of all good, 
is the greatest evil. Llence in the Old Testament, and before 
immoi-tality is brought to light, long life is oftenest named as 
the portion of the righteous. The fifth precept of the Decalogue, 
"the first commandment with promise," enjoins filial piety, "that 
thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee." The book of Proverbs speaks continually of life, as 
though " length of days " were a material part of it. " My son, 
forget not my law ; but let thy heart keep my commandments ; 
for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to 
thee." " Happy is the man that findeth wisdom. . . . Length 
of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and 
honor. , . , She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon 
her." And in the most important passage of the Old Testa- 
ment supposed to prove an after existence, the destiny of the 
righteous is simply called "everlasting life" (Dan. xii. 2). 

And in the New Testament, we find little said of eternal 
" happiness " or " blessedness." That whole class of phrases by 
which ancient philosophers and modern Christians have desig- 
nated the destiny of the good, is almost unknown in the Gospel. 
It was enough for Christ and the Apostles to talk about life. 
He who was the " Resurrection and the Life " was dangerously 
literal in his style of speech, if he simply meant that he came 
to give happiness to immortal beings. " I am that bread of life. 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



173 



Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 
This is the bread which cometii down from heaven, that a man 
may eat thereof, and not die." " Not as your fathers did eat 
manna, and are dead ; he that eateth of this bread, shall live for 
ever." And though Christ explained the " hard saying " so far 
as to say it was the spirit and not the flesh that quickened, and 
that his words were spirit and life, yet even this could hardly 
encourage the notion of immortality in those who " had no life 
in them." A slight obscurity in the argument here, disappears 
when we turn to the original Greek, which emphasizes, not " the 
words," but the name of him who uttered them. He who came 
to make known the way of life here says : " The words that 
I (tyo)) speak unto you are spirit and life." And this explains 
what what was said by Peter, when many were offended and 
^oUowed no more with him : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? 
Thou hast the words of eternal life." ^ 

Now to say that " eternal life " is the peculiar gospel phrase 
^or " endless felicity," is to beg the whole question. This would 
be an assumption precisely like that already examined, that the 
Bible " takes for granted " the immortality of the soul. But we 
are aware that argument is offered to sustain this view, in a few 
passages that seem to require a tropical sense of the words 
" life " and " death," and we proceed to examine them. 

1. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 
xvii. 3). Here the knowledge of God, or true piety, is commonly 
taken as meaning the same thing with eternal life ; i. e. the pas- 
sage is made a definition of that in which life consists. But it 
is more natural to take the language as a statement of the way 
of life. This view is supported by frequent expressions in the 
book of Proverbs and by ancient and modern comment. It also 
accords with the general tenor of the Gospel as a revelation of 
• life in Christ. " In him was life, as the life was the light of 

1 May not the phrase, " Who only hath immortality " (1 Tim. vi. 16), denote, 
not so much God's inherent immortality, as that He is the author of life? that 
all life is from Him, and with Him, so to speak, is the fund ? 
15* 



174 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



men." Christ speaks of himself as " the Resurrection and the 
Life ;" as " the Way, the Truth, and the Life." " God sent his 
only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through 
him." The knowledge of God through Christ is that which 
leads to everlasting life. 

A similar passage, sometimes adduced as containing an ethical 
definition of eternal life, occurs in 1 John v. 20: "And we 
know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under- 
standing, that we may know Him that is true ; and we are in 
Him that is true, [even] in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the 
true God, and eternal life." But the pronoun "this" (ovrog^ evi- 
dently refers to God, as the author or giver of life. The 
meaning is : " He is the true God, and eternal life." Hence 
" the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life 
is in His Son. He that hath the Son, hath life ; and he that 
hath not the Son, hath not life" (vv. 11, 12). With this com- 
pare the parable of the Good Shepherd, where Christ, after 
having spoken of life in an undeniably literal sense, — "the good 
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep," " I lay down my life for 
the sheep," — says: "And I give unto them eternal life; and 
they shall never perish ; neither shall any man pluck them out 
of my hand." And this safety of those who believe in Christ 
manifestly refers to the Resurrection as the consummation of 
their life : " This is the Father's will, that of all which He hath 
given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at 
the last day." ^ 

Another passage, — "To be carnally minded is death, but to 
be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Rom. viii. 6), will 
hardly be claimed as giving a definition of the terms " life " and 
" death," when it is compared with the parallel passage : " He 
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but 
he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlast- 
ing" (Gal. vi. 8). 

2. The frequent allusion in the Scriptures to the Resurrection, 
as the completing fact of eternal life, explains one or two other 
expressions often supposed to define a moral or spiritual death, 

1 John vi. 39; comp. ver. 40, and ch. xL 25; xiv. 6; Col. iii. 4. 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



175 



and also a whole class of jxissages respecting man's destiny. 
"And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and 
sins" (Eph. ii. 1 ; comp. Col. ii. 13). The context, we think, 
shows that, by the figure we have already named, the future life 
is anticipated, as already present. Without that life which is 
due to Christ's resurrection, and which is perfected in our own 
resurrection, we are under sentence of death, past all hope, dead, 
by reason of trespasses and sins. " But God, who is rich in 
mercy, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us 
together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made 
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." This is 
certainly not accomplished yet, unless in a metaphorical sense 
no more natural than the prolepsis which we assume. We shall 
yet be raised up and shall sit together, in the heavenlies ; and 
the inheritance which God gives us, is as surely ours as if we 
already possessed it. And in the passage in Colossians, the 
allusion to Christ's resurrection, and to the glorified estate which 
awaits the Christian, confirms the same view : " Ye also are 
risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who 
hath raised him from the dead. Even you, being dead in your 
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened 
together with him [Christ being the first fruits, the interval of 
time making no difl^erence] having forgiven you all trespasses. 
. . When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye 
also appear with him in glory." ^ 

Is it objected that the ungodly life of the unbeliever, and the 
godly life of the believer, are named in the context ? Very true ; 
but this by no means precludes the literal sense of the terms life 
and death. The connection of the two is perfectly natural. As 
if it were said : You are redeemed from death ; you are, then, 
" dead with Christ " from the rudiments of the world ; mortify 

1 The proleptic sense of vsKpog is supported in one or more of tlie following 
passages, — Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col, ii. 13; Matt. viii. 22; Eom. vi. 11; viii. 10; 1 
Tim. V. 6; Kev. iii. 1, — by Theodoret, Chrysostom, Augustine, Erasmus, Cal- 
vin, Beza, Turretin, Calovius, Vatablus, Zanchius, Piscator, Zegerus, Estius, 
Menochius, Parens, Toletus, Calixtus, Gomar, Grotius, Vitringa, Bengel, Mich- 
aelis, Bretschneider, Wahl, Eiickert, Flatt, Fritzsche, Eeiche, Usteri, Kiiufler, 
Tholuck, Meyer, Hammond, Whitby, Clarke, Mackuight. 



176 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



therefore your members which are upon the earth. Or as it is 
said in Romans, chap, vi., where the same contrast is made be- 
tween death and the resurrection, and between the old man and 
the new man : " Now if we be dead with Christ, we beheve that 
we shall also live with him. . . . For in that he died, he 
died unto sin once ; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, 
but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

"Likewise alive unto God." This cannot denote mere life 
from a spiritual death ; for Christ, the example of it, never was 
spiritually dead. It is, rather, an anticipation of the completion 
of life in the resurrection, and hence an argument for the resur- 
rection. Just as Christ silenced the Sadducees by reminding them 
that the God of Abraham, Isaao, and Jacob, was the God, not of 
the dead, but of the living ; " for they all live unto Him." That 
is, they shall yet live, and therefore God may be called their 
God. Manifestly, if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were then alive, 
the proof of the resurrection came to naught.^ 

But we are forgetting the passage we set out to explain. Is 
it insisted that the phrase " dead in trespasses and sins " denotes 
a moral deadness ? If so, then Paul charges the Corinthian 
Christians with being impenitent men, when he says : " If Christ 
be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins" But 
he evidently meant, that if there were no resurrection they were 
still subject to death, as the consequence of sin ; there was no 
future life for them. In a similar way, if we mistake not, Christ 

1 The Syriac version, as translated by Dr. Murdock, renders as above: " For 
they all live unto Him." This rendering is also allowable, if not requisite, in 
1 Cor. XV. 22 : " For as in Adam they [i. e. those who sleep in Christ] all die, 
even so in Christ shall they all be made alive." 

The i-easoning of Christ doubtless implies that the souls of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob, were then in existence, else their resurrection were- impossible. But 
the resurrection would be equally impossible if they were alive. Hence it was 
well said by Tyndale in his Answer to More, pp. 180, 181: "And ye, in putting 
them [the souls of the dead] in heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the argu- 
ments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the Resurrection. ... If the souls 
be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be ; and 
then what cause is there of the Kesurrection ? " Compare Bretschneider, 
Grundlage der Evaug. Pietismus, pp. 237, 238. 



GENEEAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



177 



would exclude the unbelieving Jews from the eternal life : " Ye 
shall seek me, and shall die in your sins." ^ And when he said 
to one who wished to bury his father, ere he became his disci- 
ple : " Let the dead bury their dead," he simply characterized 
those who had no part in him as the subjects of death. They 
were dead because they had no future life. The rhetorical 
figure is the same which the Hebrew doctors have allowed in 
the original sentence of death, and which one of the most learned 
Rabbies has stated thus : " The wicked in their life time are 
called dead, and their soul is to be destroyed with the ignominy 
of the body, and will not have immortality or eternity." ^ 

But yielding, for argument's sake, all the passages in which the 
sense of " spiritual death " is claimed, the immortal life of the 
wicked would not follow. The drunkard, we often say, has de- 
stroyed " himself Do we infer, because he is not dead yet, that 
he will live for ever? Just the opposite. So "spiritual death" 
might foreshadow a final death that leaves no trace of life nor 
gleam of hope. 

We conclude that Isaac Watts is justified in saying : " There 
is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word 
death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, neces- 
sarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either 
to Adam the actual sinner, or to his posterity." ^ 

If now we have shown that the literal sense of the terms 
" life " and '•' death " is not wanting in the scriptural use of them, 
we are prepared to consider the various expressions commonly 
applied to the destiny of the lost. One of the most significant 
of these is ^ 

1 John, viii. 21, 24; comp. vv. 51, 52: " Abraham is dead, and the prophets; 
and thou sayest, " If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death." 

2 Abarbanel, Smiimary of the Faith, c. 24. Compare John xi. 25, 26 : "I am 
the resurrection, and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live;" iTim. v. 6: "She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she 
liveth; " John, v.24; on which Bretschueider remarks, Evang. Pietismus, p. 259: 
" the perfect tense {fieradeSriKev) is used, because the speaker conceives of the 
future as already past" (comp. Winer's Grammarl; 1 John, iii. 14, 15; perhaps 
Eom. iv. 17: " God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which 
are not [yet] as though they [already] were;" Rom. v. 15; vi. 8, 11, 13; 2 Cor, 
V. 14, 15; perhaps chap. vi. 9; Heb. xi. 1 (so Theodorct), 19; xii. 22, 23. 

3 Euin and Recovery of Mankind, q. 11, § 3. 



178 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



a. The Second Death, — This phrase occurs four times, in the 
Apocalypse, ii. 11 ; xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8. In all these instances 
the contrasted " crown of life," " resurrection," " book of life," 
and " water of life," indicate a literal sense of the term " death." 
But the phrase is most important historically. For it was cur- 
rent among the Jews, and shows (1.) that they made the distinc- 
tion between judgment in this world, and in the world to come, 
which is not often made in the Old Testament ; and (2.) that 
they understood by this death, exclusion from life. 

The following examples of its use are found in the early Jew- 
ish books : " Every idolater, who says that there is another God 
besides me, I w^ill slay with the second death, from which no 
man can come to life again." ^ "In this place (Exod. xix. 12) 
two deaths are spoken of, as also in Gen. xxx. 1, that is, the 
second death." ^ " Every thief, or robber of his neighbor's goods, 
shall fall by his iniquities, that he may die the second death." ^ 
" We learn from this place, (Num. xiv. 37,) that they died the 
second death." * " Because he [Cain] was doubly guilty, he was 
slain with a two-fold death — the latter far more severe than the 
former." ^ " Let Reuben live, and not die the second death, by 
which the ungodly die in the world to come."^ "This hath * 
been decreed by the Lord, that this sin shall not be forgiven 
them, until they die the second death." " Behold, this is writ- 
ten before me, I will not give them long life, until I have taken 
vengeance for their sins ; and I will give their glory [soul] to 

1 Pivke E. Elieser, c. 34. See Schoettgen, Horas Heb. in Apoc. xx. 14. 

2 Jalkut Rubeni, fol. 93, 4. The allusion to Gen. xxx. 1, " Give me children, 
or else I die," shows how abhorrent from the notion of eternal misery was th" 
phrase "second death." But it might be applied to the fate of Rachel without 
offspring, which constituted for the Hebrew a kind of vicarious immortality. 
No less decisive against the sense of eternal misery is the statement of Julius 
Africanus (A. D. 221), that "Adam being one hundred and thirty years old 
begat Seth; and living thereafter eight hundi-ed years he died, to wit, the second 
DEATH." Chronicon, § 6. See Routh, Reliqq. Sacroe, II. 126. 

3 Ibid. fol. 124, 1. 4 Ibid. fol. 138, 4, comp. Sota, fol. 35, 1. 

5 Ibid. fol. 141, 1. 6 Targum Hieros. Deut. xxxiii. 6 ; comp. Onkelos. 

7 Targum, Isa. xxii. 14; comp. Rom. vi. 7; 1. Peter iv. 1. For death was 
regarded as an expiation, an outlawry, and, in its way, a release from guilt; 
•whence the phrase: " Free among the dead" (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5). Kimchi says the 
Targumist " understands the death of the soul in the world to come." 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



179 



the second death." ^ " They shall die the second death, and 
shall not live in the world to come, saith the Lord." ^ " They 
shall die the second death, so as not to enter into the world to 
come." ^ 

These examples plainly warrant the remark of Hammond on 
the phrase " second death," that " it seems to be taken from the 
Jews, who use it proverbially for final, utter, irreversible destruc- 
tion. ... It seems to denote such a death from which there 
is no release. And according to this notion of it, as it reflects 
fitly on the first death, (which is a destruction, but such as is 
reparable by a reviving or resurrection, but this past hopes and 
exclusive of that,) so will all the several places wherein it is 
used be clearly interpreted. [The doctor goes on to give an 
ecclesiastical turn to this exposition : ' So ch. xxi. 8, the lake that 
burneth with fire ^ etc., is called the "second death," into which 
they are said to go that are never to appear in the church again;' 
but he adds :] And though in these different matters some dif- 
ference there must needs be in the significations, yet in all of 
them the notion of utter destruction, final, irreparable excision, 
may very properly be retained, and applied to each of them." 

The similar phrase in Jude, ver. 12, " twice dead," if explained 
by the following words, " plucked up by the roots," clearly de- 
notes an utter destruction. The tree that has been cut down, 
may grow again ; the tree that has been uprooted, never. 

b. Excision. The phrase " shall be cut off"" is often used in 
the Old Testament to denote the end of the wicked. Many of 
the Hebrew doctors regard it as a punishment by the hand of 
God. And Mainionides interprets the expression : " That soul 
shall be cut off from his people " (Gen. xvii. 14), of the utter 
destruction of soul and body. It was the " greater excommuni- 
cation," and that could be nothing less than death. Says Gese- 

1 Targum, Isa. Ixvi. 6 ; comp. ver. 15 ; Ps. xlix. 11. 2 ib, Jer. li. 39. 

3 lb. Jer. li. 57. There are two other instances that signify little. " Whoever 
in time of famine voluntarily dies of hunger, is free from the second death." — •" 
Taanith, fol. 11, 1. " There are two kinds of righteousness or mercy, one, which 
delivers from the second death, the other, which delivers from the judgment of 
hell." — Bava bathra, fol. 10, 1, ad Prov, xi. 4. The distinction is not clear, 
but it can not prove any thing in the present question. 



180 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



nius, " It is never the punislimeiit of exile, as supposed bj J. D. 
Micliaelis." The familiarity of the Jews with the notion of the 
second death, indicates that the meaning of this phrase can 
hardly be restricted to the death of the body. The formula used 
in the ratifying of covenants may favor the extended sense of 
the phrase. The sacrifice of a victim was an imprecation : " May 
I thus die, if I be not faithful to this engagement." Hence the 
phrase " to make a covenant,"^ might imply the penalty of which 
the Jews often spoke, — the being " cut off from the life of the 
world to come." The only instance in which the extended sense 
of the phrase involves any difficulty, is in Dan. ix. 26 : "The 
Messiah shall be cut off." But the difficulty here is created by 
the mystery of the incarnation. The manifest exception cannot 
do away the rule. 

This view is confirmed by the phrase in Ps. xxxvii. 38, " The 
end of the wicked shall be cut off," compared with Prov. xxiv. 
14, 20. The Hebrew word in'^irii^^ here rendered "end" and 
" reward," is the same which commonly denotes " after time," 
"the future," "the last days," "latter state," "final lot." It 
might be not inaptly rendered hereafter, thus : " The hereafter 
of the wicked shall be cut off." " Then shall there be a here- 
after [to thee], and thy expectation shall not be cut off." "There 
shall be no hereafter to the wicked man." But the sense is 
perhaps more aptly given by a Jewish Rabbi, speaking of a 
cessation of existence, thus : " There shall be no residuum to 
the wicked man ; the light of the ungodly shall be extin- 
guished."^ 

c. Anathema. This word occurs six times in the New Testa- 
ment, viz: Acts xxiii. 14; Rom. ix. 3 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3; xvi. 22; 
Gal. i. 8, 9. It also frequently occurs in the Septuagint, as the 
equivalent of the Hebrew cherem. A few examples will indi- 
cate its proper sense. "No devoted thing (dva^e/za) shall be 
redeemed, but shall surely be put to death " (Lev. xxvii. 29 ; 

1 In'i'nS fTniD opm-o- TEfiveiv, foedus secare. 

2 Ebn Latiph; sea Pocock, Porta Mosis, Notse Misc. c. 6. 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



181 



eomp. Deut. vii. 26 ; xiii. 17 ; Josh. vi. 17, 18 ; 1 Cliron. ii. 7 ; 
Zech. xiv. 11). In Jud. i. 17, some copies give, instead of 
avdeejia, k^oXddpevcig, " utter destruction." In Num. xxi. 2 ; Deut. 
XX. 17; Jud. xxi. 11; and Kgs. xv. 3, and other places, the 
verb^ is used to denote utter subversion and destruction. 

These examples clearly sustain the following definitions of 
Schleusner, in his N. T. Lexicon : " 1. Any thing set apart from 
common use; victim, sacrifice. 2. Whatever is destined to 
destruction ; what is given to perish (perditur), is blotted out. 
cut off. 3. One devoted to a miserable fate, to be sacrificed in 
expiation ; one who is an abomination, to be detested and re- 
moved from the sight of men ; an abominable thing, to be 
removed from the sight of God and men." Compare Wahl, 
Bretschneider, and Kobinson. Was the avadefia of the N. T. an 
immortal thing, or a thing to be conserved in eternal being ? 

In a single instance (1 Cor. xvi. 22) the word "maranatha" 
is added. If this means " the Lord cometh," as many think, the 
passage is parallel with that in 2 Thes. i. 8, 9 ; where we shall 
find that the proper destruction of the wicked is foretold. 

d. Destruction, or Pei^dition. The latter of these terms is not 
used in our version of the Old Testament, though it is used in 
the New Testament instead of the term " destruction," and in 
rendering the same Greek word d/roAaa. This and its cognate 
o2,edpoc, with the corresponding verbs, are used about ninety 
times in the New Testament. This number includes the cases 
in which cnrtjleta is translated by " waste " (Matt. xxvi. 8 ; Mark 
xiv. 4), "damnation," or " damnable" (2 Pet. ii. 1, 3), and the 
verb a-Kbl7M\Li by "lose," or "lost" (Matt. x. 6, 39 ; xv. 24 ; xvi. 
25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24, 25 ; xvii. 33 ; John xii. 25), 
and excludes those in which other Greek words are employed.^ 

1 'AvadEiiari^u). Compare the use of h^okodpEvu, Josh. x. 1 ; 2 Chron. xx. 24 ; 
et alibi saspe ; kpri'xoa), Isa. xi. 15 ; e^eprj(^6(0, Jer. xxv. 9 ; cKpavc^u, Deut. vii. 2 ; 
Jer. 1. 21; li. 3; ^ovevo), Josh. x. 35; a7r6?i2,v(it, Isa. xxxiv. 2; xxxvii. 11; xliii. 
28; for the same Heb. verb, b'^Din- 

2 The Greek ^dood (corruption) is sometimes rendered destruction," so 
cvvTpLfJiJ.a, Rom. iii. 16. The verbs Ivu, KaiaXvo), are rendered "destroy,'" 
Matt. V. 17; xxvi. 61; xxYii. 4Q; Mark xiv, 58; xy. 29; Gal. ii. 18; and 

16 



182 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



A glance at the passages thus reduced to a class, shows that 
the literal sense of the terms in question is manifestly the true 
one in most instances. Two or three of them seem to forbid 
any other sense. In Matt. x. 28, we read of " Him who is able 
to destroy (aTroleaaL) both soul and body in hell." If the body is 
not destroyed by a deathless torment, why the soul ? In Acts iii. 
23, the prediction of Moses, — "every soul which will not hear 
that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed(fso?^o<?pf"u0^(7£T-aOfrom among 
the people," is cited without the remotest hint of a destruction 
that does not kilL But the metaphorical sense is supposed to 
hold in two or three cases which should be examined. 

1. It is thought the "loss of the soul" cannot denote its 
proper destruction, but is something far more terrible. But in 
Matt. X. 39 ; xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24 ; xvii. 33 ; 
John xii. 25, where the term a-KoXkoni is used in connexion with 
•^vxT}, this noun is rendered, not "soul," but "life." In Matt. xvi. 
26, and Mark viii. 36, where V^v^^ is rendered "soul," the verb 
is (^riiJMO), which is rightly rendered "shall suffer loss" in 1 Cor. 
iii. 15, where the loss of unapproved work, " hay, wood, and 
stubble," is spoken of. And in Luke ix. 25, the phrase is " lose 
{iLTTolsGa^') himself, or be cast away (C??i«iw0£fV)." 

2. In 2 Pet. iii. 6, the world which was before the flood is said 
to have "perished" (a-KuleTo) , though it was not annihilated. 
May not the soul perish likewise ? 

The question here raised is not one of geology. In that court 
we might prove that the "new heavens and the new eartli" will 
be identical with those which now subsist ; or that though they 
be changed as garments (Heb. i. 11, 12), they will perish 
never. But to the mind of the inspired writer, the earth, purged 
and changed by the deluge, was to all intents and purposes a 
new thing ; and he might properly speak of " the world that then 
was," and " the heavens and the earth which are now," as two 
different things. Things are destroyed variously, by change of 
form, or by loss of being, according to their nature. Hence the 

1 John iii. 8; also nopdio), Acts ix. 21; Gal. i. 13, 23; and Karapyeu, Eom. vi, 6; 
1 Cor. yi, 13.;j^v. 2§ ; 2 Thes. ii. 8; Heb. ii. 14. 



GENERAL TENOR OF BIBLE LANGUAGE. 



183 



early doctrine of the last things : " The clay of the Lord coraeth, 
in which every thing that is seen shall be dissolved, and the 
wicked shall be destroyed with it." ^ 

o. In 1 Cor. V. 5, Paul directs the incestuous person to be 
given over to Satan for the destruction (oXeOpov) of the flesh, 
that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." 
Could he mean that this person should suffer death ? 

Granting that Paul simply advised excommunication, his lan- 
guage may have been a Jewish formula for the "greater excom- 
munication," requiring the princij^al witness or accuser to cast 
the first stone. If so, the phrase, and not the vjord, w'ould be the 
metaphor. 

But the literal sense of the passage is sanctioned by good 
authority. Thus Bloomfield : " That the Apostles had the power 
and were authorized to punish notorious offenders with disease 
and death in a supernatural manner, few will deny. See John 
XX. 23; Acts xiii. 11, and 1 Cor. xi. 29."^ And Lightfoot, 
remarking that the offender " deserved death, two or three times 
over," says : " we are led to be of their opinion who interpret the 
place of a miraculous action, namely, of the real delivery of this 
person into the hands and power of Satan, to be scourged by him, 
and tormented by him with diseases, tortures and affrightments."'* 

e. Corruption, The Greek verb (pddpo and its derivatives, 
often rendered "destroy" and "destruction," occur thirty-five 
times in the New Testament. In a few instances the word is 
used in its modern ethical sense ; e. g. 1 Cor. xv. 33 ; 2 Cor. xi. 
3 ; 1 Tim. vi. 5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8. But a comparison of passages 
will show that this sense is the exception and not the rule. Thus 
"He that sowetli to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption " 
{^Oopdv, Gal. vi. 8). With this compare the saying in Ecclesi- 
asticus, x. 11 : "When a man shall die, he shall inherit serpents, 
and beasts, and worms ;" and ch. xix. 3 : "He that joinetli him- 
self to harlots, will be reckless. Eottenness and worms shall 

1 Apostolical Constitutions, b. 1, § 3. 

2Heb. Satan; Gk. Aia(?oZof ; comp. Kev. xii. 10; 1 Tim. iii. 11; 2 Tim. iii 
3 ; Tit. ii. 3. 

3 Critical Digest, in loco. ^ Horai Hebraicae, in loco. 



184 



THE SCRIPTUKAL ARGUJIENT. 



inherit him ; and he shall be lifted up for a greater example ; 
and his soul shall be taken away out of the number." The 
comparison made in 2 Pet. ii. 12, indicates a literal destruction 
of the wicked : " But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be 
taken and destroyed ^dopav), shall utterly perish (i(aTa<pdap7/Gov- 
rai) in their own corruption" (j>dopa', comp. 1 Cor. iii. 17 ; Rev. 
xi. 18). On the other hand " incorruption " (u(j>dapaia), or an 
incorruptible portion, is made the inheritance of the righteous, in 
I Cor. XV. 42, 50, 53, 54 ; 1 Pet. i. 23. 

We shall meet the literal sense of the word in the writings of 
the early Christians. To assume it^ modern sense in the inter- 
pretation of Scripture, is to read history backward. And even 
granting the metaphorical sense were predominant, we should 
iiardly infer the immortality of the vicious ; for, in every analogy, 
corruption is a method of death and not of life. 

/. Other expressions. The wicked are often spoken of as 
''consumed," "devoured," "burned." Fire is represented as 
winoj out from before the Lord to devour his enemies, in various 
passages of the O. T., Lev. x. 2 ; Num. xvi. 35 ; xxvi. 10 ; 2 
Kings i. 10, 12, 14; Ps. xxi. 9, comp. 2 Sam. xxii. 9 ; Ps. xviii. 

8 ; and in Rev. xx. 9 (comp. Heb. x. 26, 27). The divine anger 
is represented as "a consuming fire," Deut. iv. 24 ; Heb. xii. 29. 
And such passages as Ps. Ixxiii. 27 ; civ. 35 ; Mai. iv. 1 ; Matt, 
xiii. 30, 40-43 ; John, xv. 6 ; Heb. vi. 8, can hardly be referred to 
God's temporal judgments. 

If now literal lire is the most natural emblem of destruction, 
we should expect that the fire of divine wrath will destroy the 
soul. The passages supposed to prove the contrary will be 
examined in their place. 

The wicked are said to be " slain," in various passages that 
most naturally indicate their final doom ; e. g. Ps. xxxiv. 21 ; 
Ixii. 3 ; cxxxix. 19 ; Pro v. i. 32 ; Isa. xi. 4 ; Ixvi. 16 ; Luke xix. 
27. Compare the phrases "blot out," Ps. Ixix. 28; "grind to 
powder," Matt. xxi. 44; Luke xx. 18; "dash in pieces," Ps. ii^ 

9 ; " tear in pieces," Ps. 1. 22 ; " put away as dross," Ps. cxix. 
119 ; " shall be as nothing," Isa. xli. 11, 12 ; " shall not be," Ps. 
xxxvii. 10 ; Prov. xii. 7. 



SUPrOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



185 



We might here adduce the various forms of prayer and impre- 
cation respecting the wicked, which would be meaningless, or 
horrible, if they must subsist for ever. That of Abigail is an 
example : " The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of 
life with the Lord thy God; and the souls of thine enemies, 
them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling" (1 Sam. 
XXV. 29). And that of Peter: "Thy money perish with thee" 
(Acts viii. 20). 

§ 4. PASSAGES SUPPOSED TO PKOVE THE IMMORTALITY OF 
THE LOST. 

We now come to the second division of the inferential argu- 
ment. The passages on which it is based may be classified, as 
follows : 

I. Those in which the ruin of the lost, under various names, 
is spoken of as eternal. The expressions are : " everlasting con- 
tempt," Dan. xii. 2 ; " everlasting destruction," 2 Thes. i. 9 ; 
" everlasting punishment," Matt. xxv. 46 ; eternal damnation," 
Mark iii. 29 ; " eternal judgment," Heb. vi. 2. 

II. Those in which the term " everlasting" or its equivalent 
•is applied to the cause of their supposed endless misery. The 
expressions are: "unquenchable fire," Matt. iii. 12; Luke iii. 
17 ; Mark ix. 43, 45 ; " their worm shall not die, neither shall 
their fire be quenched," Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Mark ix. 44, 4G, 48 : 
" everlasting" or " eternal fire," Matt, xviii. 8 ; xxv. 41 ; Jude. 
ver. 7; "everlasting burnings," Isa. xxxiii. 14; "the wrath of 
God abideth on him," John iii. 36. 

IIL One expression supposed to denote eternal sinfulness, 
Kev. xxii. 11. 

IV. Those in which the concomitants of the final ruin are 
supposed to indicate an eternal existence. See the phrases: 
"mist of darkness for ever," 2 Pet ii. 17 ; "blackness of dark- 
ness for ever," Jude, ver. 13 ; " smoke," and " smoke of torment," 
rising for ever, Rev. xiv. 11; xix. 3. Here belong the ex- 
pressions, "wailing," and "gnashing of teeth," Matt. viii. 12; 
xiii. 42, 50; xxii. 13; xxiv. 51 ; xxv. 30; Luke xiii. 28; "to 
16* 



186 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGU3IENT. 



be without," Rev. xxii. 15 ; also the parable of the Rich Man 
and Lazarus, Luke xvi. 19-31 ; and the phrase "everlasting 
chains," Jude, ver. 6. 

V. The passage in which Satan, the beast and the false 
prophet are said to be " tormented, day and night, for ever and 
ever," Rev. xx. 10. 

We might remark upon the paucity and general obscurity of 
these expressions, if they alone, or as a class, must prove man's 
danger of incurring eternal woe. But it will be better to inquire 
respecting them, one by one, what they do mean. 

I. 1. "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; 
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." — 
Dan. xii. 2. 

It is thought by good critics that the prophet here speaks only 
of the resurrection of the righteous, called the " first resurrec- 
tion " in Rev. xx. 5 ; and that the passage should be read : 
" these [who awake] to everlasting life, and those [who do not 
awake] to shame and everlasting contempt." This would agree 
with the Syriac version : " some to death, and the eternal con- 
tempt of their companions."-^ 

But we are willing to take the passage as making no distinc- 
tion between the first and the second resurrection. We need 
then only to correct the frequent dislocation by which the 
" shame " as well as the " contempt " is made everlasting. 
Though even on this we need not insist ; for the word " shame " 
can not refer to the feelings of the lost. The Hebrew ^lii^'l'l) 
is used only here and in Isa. Ixvi. 24 (Eng. " an abhorring "), 
where, says Dr. Win tie, it denotes " a kind of spectacle, show, 
or nausea," and is translated " nausea " by Buxtorf in his Con- 
cordance. The allusion seems to be to the putrefaction of death. 
The "contempt," if it expresses a feeling of the righteous, is 
farther described in such passages as Mai. iv. 3 ; Matt. xiii. 
40-43 ; 2 Pet. ii. 9-12 ; Ps. xcii. 7 ; on which last passage 

1 " Quidam vero ad interitum et opprobrium sociorum suorum aeternum." — 
Walton's Polyglott. The socii may refer to those who live ; or, in a dramatic 
^-ay, to the companionship of death; see Isa. xiv. 9-20; Ezek. xxxii. 2i, 25, 30. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 187 



Hengstenberg remarks, perhaps too carelessly : " The annihila- 
tion of the wicked comes into notice as the basis of the deliver- 
ance of the righteous, which is the proper theme of the Psalm." 

2. " And to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the Lord Jesus 
shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, tak- 
ing vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruc- 
tion, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." — 
2 Thes. i. 7-9. 

The common mistake in the interpretation of this passage is 
in taking the preposition " from " to denote separation, and not 
the origin or source of the destruction named. The parallel 
expression in Acts iii. 19, "The times of refreshing shall come 
from the presence of the Lord (drro 7fpoc6)TTov rov Kvpiov)" and 
others describing the destruction of God's enemies (Lev. x. 2 ; 
Num. xvi. 35 ; 2 Kings i. 10, 12, 14 ; Rev. xx. 9), suggest the 
true sense ; which is thus given by Macknight : " These wicked 
men, being raised from the dead, shall suffer punishment, even 
everlasting destruction, by fire issuing from the presence of the 
Lord." And by Conybeare and Howson : " Then shall go forth 
against them, from the presence of the Lord, and from the bright- 
ness of his glorious majesty, their righteous doom, even an ever- 
lasting destruction." This view is supported by Grotius, Cocce- 
ius, Pellicanus, Castalio, Le Clerc, Poole, Hammond, Benson, 
Henry, Bengel, Pelt, Baumgarten-Crusius, De Wette. 

The sense of the adjective " everlasting " will be given in our 
discussion of Mark iii. 29, and Heb. vi. 2. 

3. " These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous 
into life eternal." — ^Matt. xxv. 46. 

This is the most important of all the passages supposed to 
' affirm the eternal suffering, and to imply the immortality, of 
the lost. As we have before remarked, we waive all argument 
in behalf of a limited sense of the word " everlasting," though a 
very strong case coiaid be made out for such a sense, if the doc- 
trine of human destiny were made to turn on words expressive 



188 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



of duration. Not only are all the terms that denote eternity 
very often in the Bible used in a modified sense, but the very 
phrase here employed by our Savior to denote the doom of the 
lost, is used by Philo to express an insuperable resentment in 
this life. " It is better," he says, " not to promise at all, than 
not to give prompt assistance. For, in the former case, no 
blame follows ; but in the latter, there is dissatisfaction from the 
weaker class, and a deep hatred and lasting punishment (KoTiaaig 
aiuvLog) from such as are powerful." He also speaks of an " eter- 
nal (altdVLog, perhaps meanrng far-reaching) and perfect wisdom."^ 
And the argument to show that aluvtog signifies, not the continu- 
ance, but the spiritual nature, of the future retributions, is sup- 
ported by numerous examples that have been carefully collected 
by a late writer.^ But, happily, the whole doctrine of a future 
life was never designed, and has not been left, to depend on this 
class, nor on any single class, of words. Man's hope of immor- 
tality is, rather, inwrought into the very texture of the revealed 
Word, and is derived from the momentous facts of the gospel 
history."* 

In discussing the passage in hand, we accept, at the outset, 
the translation of KolaGig by the word " punishment," and inquire 
(1.) Does it necessarily denote conscious pain? (2.) Did the 
Jews of Christ's time regard eternal privation of being as an 
eternal punishment ? 

(1.) We are told that the word is peculiarly expressive, a 
stronger word than the TLjiupia commonly used to denote punish- 
ment ; a verbal noun, denoting action, and not result ; a noun 
of infliction.^ And from the Syriac we have in this place, " tor- 
ment ; " as also in the common version of 1 John iv. 18. 

The Syriac, however, cannot be relied on in this argument, as 
it does not render the word uniformly in the four places where 
the noun or the verb occurs. In Acts iv. 21, it reads : "to pun- 
ish ; " in 2 Peter ii. 9 : "to be tormented ; " as also in verse 4, 

1 Fragm. 0pp. 11. 667, ed. Mangey. 2 De Human. II. p. 397 (al. 709;. 

3 E. S. Goodwill, Christian Examiner, Vols. V. IX. X. XII. XIV. 

4 See I. Taylor, Endless Life, Saturday Evening, c. 27. 
6 New Engiander, May, 1856, p. 171. 



i 

I 

SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 189 

where some manuscripts read Kola^oixivovg Trjpelv ; in 1 John iv. 18: 
*' existeth in peril." Moreover, the Syriac word used in the 
passage in hand admits a milder sense, and is rendered " supph- 
cium " (punishment) by Walton and White.-^ 

The translation of the word by " chastisement " is, we think, 
; no better supported. That is indeed the classic sense of the 
word, wdiich appears in the adjective uKolaarog (the scorner), in 
j Prov. xxi. 11. But it is not favored by the other passages in 
I the New Testament ; and it is opposed by the distinction often 
made between KoXaaic and rifiupta, as corrective or disciplinary, 
and judicial. The former was the punishment of children and 
slaves ; the latter, of enemies or criminals. Thus Aristotle : 
" Kolaaig is inflicted for the sake of him who suffers it, but Ttfiuptay 
for the satisfaction of him who requires it." ^ And Eustathius 
says : " KoZa^f is properly a certain kind of punishment ; that 
is, a certain chastising and restraining of the disposition, but not 
vindictive punishment."^ 

The translation by " restraint " is favored by the use of the 
present tense in 2 Pet. ii. 9 (KoXa^ofiivovc, comp. ver. 4 ; Jude ver. 
6 ; and perhaps Acts iv. 21), and by a remark of Schleusner.'* 
It is favored by the tenor of various passages which represent the 
wicked as the troublers of the righteous, to be effectually re- 
strained by God's final judgments. See Ps. xxxvii. ; Ixxiii. ; 
xcii. ; Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Dan. xii. 2, 3 ; Matt. xiii. 40-43 ; 2 Thes. 
6-10; 2 Pet. ii. 4-12; Jude vv. 5-7, 13. But this idea is 
not prominent in Matt, xxv., and such a rendering would be 
hardly tenable. 

One respectable writer accepts the translation by the word • 
" abscission," or " excision." ^ This seems to be supported by the 
cognate KoTiodou (Matt. xxiv. 22 ; Mark xiii. 20), and by the 

1 Schaaf, in his Lexicon, renders the noun by cruciatus, tormentum, suppli- 
cium ; and the verb by cruciavit, vexavit, excruciavit, torsit, afflixit, pressit, 
angustavit, angustiis affecit, submersit, sufifocavit, strangulavit. 

2 Rhet 1. 1, c. 10, § 4, cited by Stephanus. 

3 "Non autem ultio et vindicta." See Favorinus Varinus, Lexicon; — Gro- 
tius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, I. 2, c. 20, § 7. 

4 In his Lexicon he renders in 1 Jolm iv. 18: "fear produces constraint." 

5 Stephen, Essays m Eccl. Biog., Epilogiic. Comp. Landis, Iramort. of Soul, 
p. 480. 



190 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



original sense of "pruning." But in pruning, the tree is not 
''cut off" — only the branches. And though, by the laws of 
language, the word ^nigJd easily have acquired this sense, we 
find no proof that it has done so. 

The general sense of " punishment " we think is sustained by 
the comparison of the twenty-eight instances in which tlie noun 
or verb occurs in the Septuagint and other Greek versions. 
Most of these are found, indeed, in the Apocryphal Books. But 
this volume of Hellenistic Greek is inferior to no other authority, 
to determine the usus loquendi of words in the New Testament. 
The following are the most important of the passages : 

Ezck. xiv. 3, 4, 7; xliii. 11 ; xliv. 12 (marg.). Here Ko}.aaiq occurs as 
the equivalent of " stumbhng-block/' Schleusner explains the translation 
thus : " Whatever is the cause of misfortune or punishment, is called in 
Scripture a * stumbling-block.' " For the nature of the punishment in- 
curred, see ch. xiv. 8-10. 

Ezek. xviii. 30, " So iniquity shall not be your ruin {K67MGig)." 

2 Sam. viii. 1, " David smote the Philistines, and subdued them " (Aquila, 
EKo/iaGev; Sept. erpo-tJoaTo, routed or destroi/ed). 

Prov. xxii. 23, "For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil (Symma- 
chus, KoTiuaerai,) the soul of those that spoiled them."i 

Esdras viii. 27, "And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the 
law of the King, let judgment be executed speedily upon him (i-tfj,e'AC)c 
KoAaodf/aovTat) , whether it be unto death, or to banisliment (-ifiopia, marg. 
rooting out), or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment." 

Wisd. iii. 1-4, "But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and 
torment [Saoavog) may not touch them. In the sight of the uuAvise they 
seemed to die, and their exit was reckoned a calamity, and their de- 
parture from us, utter destruction [ovvi ptii^a) ; but they are in peace. For 
though in the sight of men they arc punished {Ko7vaGdC)OLv), their hope is 
full of immortality." 

xi. 5, 6, "For by what things their enemies [the Egyptians] Avere pun- 
ished {knoT^aadrjcav } , by the same things they in their need were benefited." 
Comp. vv. 19, 17, andc. xii. 14, 15, 27 ; xvi. 1, 2, 9, 24 ; xviii. 1 1, 22. In c. xii. 
27, the Vulgate renders KolaCpiievoL by " exterminarentur " ; Calmet and 
the Port-Royalists, by " tourmentez et exterminez." 

xiv. 8-10, ".But the idol that is made by hands is cursed, and also he 
that made it ; himself, because he made it, and the corruptible thing, be- 

1 The version by Aquila was made B. C. 160; that by Symnr.achus, about 
A. D. 200. Both are regai'ded as valuable. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



191 



cause it was called a god. For to God both the Avickcd and his wickedness 
are alike hateful. And that v/hich was made, together Avitli him who made 
it, shall be punished I icu/.aadfiGerat) ." Comp. ver. 13: "For neither were 
thev from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever." i 

xiv. 4, "For a fatuity of which they [the Egyptians] were worthy brought 
them to this end ; and they lost the remembrance of those things which 
had happened, that they might fill up the punishment {KOAacLv) which 
was wanting to their torments {SaauvoL^)." 

2 Mace. iv. 38, "He put to death the sacrilegious wretch, the Lord repay- 
ing him his deserved punishment [Ko/.actv], 

vi. 14, 15, "For, not as with other nations, (whom the Lord patiently 
expecteth until he shall punish \ko>jig(il\ them in the fulness of their sins,) 
doth he also deal with us, so as to suffer our sins to come to their height, 
and then lake vengeance on us." 

The other passages are 1 Mace. vii. 7, aod 3 Mace. i. 3 ; vi. 
3, where the context shows that the punishment is death. 

The ethical sense of " punishment," as distinct from calamity 
or mere excision, is apparent in all the passages. But the word 
by no means determines the land of punishment. It may be 
torment, or it may put an end to torment (Wisd. xix. 4). It 
may be banishment, confiscation of goods, or imprisonment 
(3 Esdras vii. 27). In most of the passages, it is death. In one 
(Wisd. iii. 1-4), it is the loss of immortality,^ or utter destruc- 
tion, which seems also to be regarded as a " torment." And in 

1 The dramatic sentiment which conceives of brutes and things as guilty is 
very common. " At the Prytaneium or government-house," says Grote, " sit- 
tings were held by the four Phylo-Basileis or Tribe Kmgs, to try any inanimate 
object (a piece of wood or stone, &c.) which had caused death to anyone, with- 
out the proved intervention of a human hand : the wood or stone, when the fact 
was verified, was fonnally cast beyond the border." This practice was founded 
on feelings widely diffused tliroughout the Grecian world (See Pausan. vi. 11, 
2; and Theocritus, Idyll, xxiii. 60); analogous in principle to the Enghsh law 
respecting deodand, and to the spirit pervading the ancient Germanic codes 
generally (see Dr. C. Triimmer, Die Lehi'e von der Zurechnung, c. 28-38, Hamb. 
1845)." ' Hist, of Greece, Part 2, c. 10. Compare Gen. ix. 5; Exod. xxi. 28-32; 
and the Hebrew cherem. 

2 If this is doubted, it will be made more clear by a reference to the previous 
context: "And they (the wicked) knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for 
the reward of righteousness, nor esteemed the honor of holy souls. For God 
made man for incorruption, and to the image of his own likeness made He him. 
But by the envy of the devil death came into the world ; and they follow hiio 
that are of his side. But," etc. 



192 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



another (Wisd. xiv. 8-10), the destruction of an idol made of 
wood, in token of God's displeasure, is called punishment. To 
say nothing of these remarkable instances, those in which the 
punishment designated is death, show that the word does not 
necessarily denote torment. 

The argument from the phrase " everlasting punishment" is 
then reduced to this question : Can the adjective (altovtog) qualify 
the noun in any specific sense, as well as in its generic sense ? 
If in a given instance the Kolamg is pain, is it as proper to speak 
of " eternal pain," as of " eternal punishment ? " If in another 
instance the Kolamq is death, is it propei to speak of an " eternal 
death ? " If the given punishment is one of loss, may that loss 
be called eternal ? If so, then all argument for the specific sense 
of " torment " from the general sense of " punishment," is at an 
end. The proof of eternal suffering can not be made out from 
the phrase " everlasting punishment," but must be derived from 
other sources. And this leads us to our second inquiry : 

(2.) Did the Jews of Christ's time regard eternal privation of 
being as eternal punishment ? This question is already answered 
so far as the two passages just cited (Wisd. iii. 1-4 ; xiv. 8-10) 
may be taken to show their opinion. But there are passages in 
the canonical Scriptures equally in point. Thus Peter, speaking 
to the Jews of the resurrection of Jesus, says : " Whom God 
hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death {i^6lvaq tov davurov) 
because it was not possible that he should be holden of it" (Acts 
ii. 24). It was certainly not the pains of dying that Peter had 
in mind ; for Jesus was not saved from them. Yet we do not 
suppose that he actually suffered pain in the interval between 
his death and resurrection. The phrase was proverbial, denot- 
ing the state of death as one of gloom and wretchedness, com- 
pared with life. This sense is supported by Lightfoot, who says : 
" By the pains of death we are not to understand so much the 
torments and pangs in the last moments of death, as those bands 
which followed, viz. : the continued separation of soul and body, 
the putrefaction and corruption of the body in the grave." Thus 
David speaks of the " sorrows of death," the " sorrows of hell," 
the "snares of death," and "the pains of hell" (Ps. xviii. 4, 5; 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



193 



cxvi. 3 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 6). And Job desires to "take comfort a 
little," before entering " the land of darkness and the shadow of 
death ; a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow 
of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness " 
(ckrx. 21, 22). And in Ezek. xxxii. 24, 25, 30, the enemies 
of Israel are spoken of as " enduring shame," while they are 
described as " slain," " fallen by the sword," " gone down to 
Sheol," or to " the pit," and in their graves. The Seventy ren- 
der '• shame" by "torment" (SuoavGg), by which they evidently 
mean the torment of being dead ; and in Isa. xiv. 9-20, we find 
the same dramatic representation of the state of death as a sore 
evil. " The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover 
thee." Babylon is " gone down to the stones of the pit ; as a 
carcass trodden under foot." This natural sentiment, that it is 
an evil thing to be dead, often transfers to the dead the thoughts 
of the living about them. This is quite apparent in the famous 
argument of Cicero, where he finds it so difficult to dispel the 
illusion that the body of one actually dead may suffer in being 
torn by dogs and birds of prey. And it was said by an ancient 
Rabbi : " The worm is as tormenting to a dead man, as a needle 
to living flesh." 

We will conclude this discussion by observing — (1.) That the 
contrast of the punishment with " life eternal," naturally suggests 
that it consists in eternal death. Thus De Wette : " The con- 
ceptions — eternal punishment (Strafe) and eternal life — are not 
strictly contrasted. Zu^ is not merely blessedness, but life in the 
fullest (tiefsten) sense of the word ; and that which properly cor- 
responds to it is annihilation." And (2.) we may derive a moral 
argument from the full account here given of the solemn judg- 
ment of the great day.^ What is the sin and guilt for which the 
final sentence is here pronounced ? For what crime are they 
.condemned to their eternal punishment ? The indictment, if we 
may so name the accusation, runs thus : " I was an hungered, 
and ye gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no 

1 The reasons for supposing that the account in Matt. xxv. 31-46, is not of the 
final judgnaent, but pre-millennial, are given by Dr. Duffield, Lectures on the 
Prophecies, c. 20. 

17 



194 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and ye 
clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not." 
This charge involves the lack of all true goodness, and the 
basest ingratitude. But how different it is from the reasons 
commonly assigned for an eternal suffering. Yet it is God's own 
Theodicy. Sinful men have not loved nor regarded Him who 
caine to save them ; they have rejected and scorned Him who 
came tliat they might have life. Shall an immortality that is 
" not life " be their retribution ? 

4. "But he that shall blaspheme agaiust the Holy Ghost hath never for- 
giveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." — Mark iii. 29. ''The 
doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the 
dead, and of eternal judgment." — Heb. vi. 2. 

The words "damnation" (^:p^cr^^■) and "judgment" (/cp£/^a) are 
not essentially different. The former has indeed become a 
synonym of " eternal misery ; " but this is owing to the history 
of doctrine ; not at all to its etymology,^ nor to the original Greek. 
Thus Christ says: "As I hear, I judge; and my judgment 
(Kplmg) is just." And again: "The weightier matters of the law, 
judgment (Kpimg), mercy, and truth." "Judgment (kpIglv) and the 
love of God ; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone." 

But instead of this milder sense, which gave to the Hebrew 
champion and deliverer the name of "judge," the word has in 
Mark iii. 'I'd, the severer meaning of "condemnation."^ The 
equivalent term in Heb. vi. 2, denotes in general " sentence," 
whether favorable or unfavorable. The word yields no argu- 
ment for th i immortality of the lost. That must be sought in 
the qualifying adjective aluvLog, " eternal," and the argument is 

1 The word is derived from the Latin damnum, which signifies a fine or mulct, 
loss, injury; vvhence our word damage. The well known phrase "poena 
damni " denotes the punishment of loss in distinction from that of pain. Milton 
uses the expression: " That the commonwealtb of learning be not damnified; " 
and Locke: " The damnified person has the power; " and Barlow: " The coun- 
cil of Basil damned (imposed as a mulct) the payment of annats." See John- 
son's Diet. 

2 A.S in John iii. 18, 19; v. 24, 27, 29: 1 Cor. xi. 29. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



195 



reduced to this : Can an irreversihle sentence be properly called 
" eternal," though it be a sentence of utter destruction ? Or, is 
this adjective used to denote the eternity of effect ? 

The examples are numerous. Thus we read of an " eternal 
salvation" (Heb. v. 9 ; comp. Isa. xlv. 17) ; of "eternal redem.p- 
tion" (Heb. ix. 12) ; of "the everlasting gospel" (Rev. xiv. G, 
see Barnes's note) ; of a "perpetual covenant" (Exod. xxxi. 16; 
Jer. 1. 5) ; a "perpetual statute" (Lev. iii. 17; xxiv. 9); a 
"perpetual decree" (Jer. v. 22); a "perpetual ordinance" (Ezek. 
xlvi. 14) ; a "perpetual end" (Ps. ix. 6). And such instances 
might be multiplied, if we take the Hebrew dbis^^, " for ever," 
as equivalent to the word "eternal." See Num. xviii. 19 ; Job 
iv. 20 ; xiv. 20 ; xx. 7 ; xxiii. 7 ; xxxvi. 7 ; Ps. xliv. 23 ; xhx. 
8 ; lii. 5 ; Ixxvii. 7, 8 ; Ixxxiii. 17 ; xcii. 7 ; Obad. ver. 10 ; 
Mic. ii. 9. 

Like examples abound in early Jewish writings. Thus in the 
Book of Enoch (Laurence's translation) : " Even to the day of 
judgment, and of consummation, until the judgment [the effect 
of] which shall last for ever, be completed" (x. 15). "For in 
the great day there shall be a judgment, with which they shall 
be judged until they are consumed " (xix. 2). " Until the period 
of the great judgment ; when all shall be punished and consumed 
for ever" (xxiv. 9). "They shall be cast into a judgment of 
fire ; they shall perish in wrath, and by a judgment overpower- 
ing them for ever" (xc. 11; comp. ver. 13: "And blasphemers 
shall be annihilated every where"). "An everlasting judgment 
shall be executed" (xcii. 16; comp. ciii. 5 ; civ. 3). 

We add a few examples from the Talmud and the Eabbies, 
some of which explain the Jewish doctrine of a two-fold judg- 
ment, and thus meet the apparent argument in the phrase " hath 
never forgiveness." After having spoken of the power and 
judgments of an earthly king as temporary (" if he should slay 
me, that slaying would not be eternal ") Jochanan ben Zaccai 
says : " If the King of kings shall be angry with me, his wrath 
is eternal; if he shall bind me, his bands are eternal; if he 
should slay me, his slaying is eternal."^ Again it is said those 

1 Berachoth, fol. 28, 2. See Lightfoot, Centuria Chorog. c. 15. 



196 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGU5IENT. 



guilty of certain sins "shall descend into gelienna, and shall tliere 
be judged for ever." On which Abarbanel remarks : " Such are 
enormous sins and perverse deeds, which blind the eyes of the 
mind, and subvert the soul, so that he who commits them shall 
be cast out from the inheritance of the saints, which is the life 
of the world to come." " He that denies the resurrection of the 
dead, shall not have part in the resurrection of the dead ; for 
God rewards him with the same measure." ^ Again he says : 
"A sinner who is an Israelite shall be punished according to his 
sin, yet shall have part in the world to come ; but if a man shall 
not believe all these articles [of the Faith], he is already ex- 
cluded from the lot of Israel, as a heretic and an Epicurean 
[infidel]." And to the same purpose : " Now the greatest reward 
is the world to come ; and the heaviest punishment is extermina- 
tion."^ And Maimonides: "The sages say, For three trans- 
gressions punishment is iniiicted upon a man in this world, and 
moreover he has no share in the world that is to come ; viz : 
idolatry, adultery, and bloodshed ; but a bad tongue is equivalent 
to all these." ^ With which agrees the Talmud: "There are 
four things which are avenged of a man in this world, and jet 
the capital [of the sin] is reserved for the world that is to come."* 
The distinction is that of interest and principal ; the former might 
be exacted, and the latter remitted. So Maimonides again: 
" On all wicked [Israelites], though their sins be numerous, 
judgment is pronounced according to their sins, but yet they 
have a share in the world that is to come ; for all Israel have a 
share in the world to come, although they have sinned ; for it is 
said : ' Thy people also shall be all righteous ; they shall inherit 
the land for ever which means, the land of life, or the world 
that is to come. Also, the pious of the Gentiles shall have a 
share in the world that is to come. These, however [viz. : 
heretics, they who deny the law, etc.] have no share in the world 
that is to come, but they are cut off, destroyed, and condemned 
for ever and ever." ^ 

Such were Jewish views of the "foundation of the faith" 



1 De Capite Fidei, c. 24. 2 ib. c. 1. 

8 Yad Hachazakah, Of the Temper, c. 7, § 3. 4 Peyiah, § 1. 
6 Yad Hach. Of Kepentance, c. 3, 11, 12. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



107 



(Heb. vi. 1, 2). Christ recognizes the distinction between for- 
giveness here and hereafter (Mark iii. 29 ; comp. 1 Cor. v. 5, 
xi. 30), and makes his own application of it. The doctrine is 
that of 1 John v. 1 6 : " There is a sin unto death ; I do not say 
that ye shall pray for it." 

II. 5. " Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge liis floor, 
and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with 
unquenchable fire." — Matt. iii. 12; comp. Luke iii. 17 ; Mark ix. 43, 45; 
where the same phrase, -nip aaSearov, is used. 

With these passages should be also compared Ps. i. 4 ; Matt, 
iii. 10 ; and John xv. 6. It is obvious that any mode of reason-' 
ing which would infer from them the immortality of the lost, 
must assume the indestructibility of chaff, of felled trees, and of 
the dry branches of a vine. TVe need hardly remark that the 
word " unquenchable " denotes the fierceness of a fire, which can 
not be quenched, but must burn on, consuming what it will. 
Thus Wetstein : " The ~vp aaSearov denotes such a fire as can not 
be extinguished before it has consumed and destroyed all." So 
Kuinoel and Eosenmiiller. And Bloomfield, speaking of the 
oriental custom of burning straw and stubble, adds : The -ip 
daSeGTov completes the awful image of total destruction." 

A similar phrase is found in Homer, where the scholiast ex- 
plains : " that which burns down quickly, or is quenched with 
difficulty." ^ And the same phrase occurs in various passcages 
in the classics," in the same sense. Eusebius employs it in two 
instances in recounting the martyrdom of Christians. Cronion 
and Julian were scourged and afterwards '• consumed in an un- 
quenchable fii-e ; " and " Epimachus and Alexander, who had 

1 'AcSecTT] 6}.6^. Iliad, xiii. 169, 564 (com. i. 599), xvi. 123. 

2 See the iVnthoIogy, I. 19, 3: "Afire is soon put out; but a woman is an 
. inextinguishable fire ,■ " — Achmet, c. 122 : " Burned vrith an unquenchable fire, 

with a strong wind; " — Plutarch, Kuma, c. 19, speaks of the sacred fire, which 
he also calls immortal; — Cicero, Orat. pro Fonteio, c. 17; " Prospicite, ne ilie 
ignis Eeternus, nocturnis Fonteiae laboribus vigiliisque servatus, sacerdotis ves- 
tras lachrimis extinctus esse dicatur;" — Philo, De Temuleut. 0pp. I. 389; — 
De Sacrific. II. 254: — ^lian, De Xat. Animal. 1. 5, c. 3 ; — Callimachus, Hymr 
in Dian. 117. 

17* 



198 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



continued for a long time in prison, enduring innumerable suffer- 
ings from the scourges and scrapers, were also destroyed in an 
unquenchable fire."^ 

6. "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that 
have transgressed against me ; for their worm shall not die, neither shall 
their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." — 
Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; comp. Mark ix. 44, 46, 48. 

Here again we observe the mode of reasoning which deduces 
the immortality of the lost, must assume the indestructibility of 
"carcases." But the parallel passages show that the "un- 
quenched " fire is one which is not put out, but must consume and 
destroy. Thus in Jeremiah, foretelling the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, we read : " Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be 
poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon 
the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground ; and it 
shall burn, and shall not be' quenched" (vii. 20). Compare 2 
Kings xxii. 17 ; Ps. cxviii. 12 ; Isa. i. 28, 31 ; Jer. iv. 4; xvii. 
27 ; Ezek. xx. 47, 48 ; Amos v. 6. 

But why is it said "their worm shall not die?" The reason 
is two-fold: (1.) The word translated "abhorring," used else- 
where only in Dan. xii. 2, and signifying the nauseous spectacle 
of putrefying carcases, shows that the" worm" is not that of con- 
science, but either literal vermin, or something else of which that 
is a type. So the writer of Ecclesiasticus : " Humble thy spirit 
very much ; for the vengeance on the flesh of the ungodly is fire 
and worms" (vii. 19). Compare x. 11 ; xix. 3 ; cited above, p. 
183 ; also the Targum of Jonathan on Isa. Ixv. 6 : " I will not 
grant them long life, but I will pay them vengeance for their 
sins, and deliver their carcases to the second death ; " and Light- 
foot : " To be devoured by worms was reckoned an accursed 
thing, and what befel none but men of the greatest impiety,"^ 
And (2.) to the agency of the worm is added that of fire, to set 

1 Eccl. Hist. b. 6, c. 40. Translated by Hanmer, Lend. 1663 : " a flashing fire," 
and a "fiery pile," without note. By Crusd: "an immense fire:"' but the 
original is given in a note. 

2 Horee Heb. et Talm., Acts xii. 23. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



199 



forth, by iteration, the completeness of the destruction. What 
the worm does not devour, the fire shall consume. Thus the 
prophet Joel : " That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the 
locust eaten ; and that which the locust hath left, hath the 
canker-worm eaten ; and that which the canker-worm hath left, 
hath the caterpillar eaten" (i. 4). 

The phrase has a historical allusion, respecting which there 
are two opinions. One is that of Dr. Alexander, who, deriving 
the figure from the fires kept up in the valley of the son of Hin- 
nom, or Topliet,^ makes it an allusion to the fate of the apostate 
Israel : " The central figure is Jerusalem, and its walls the 
dividing line between the two contrasted objects. Within is the 
true Israel, without the false." The latter is finally exhibited, 
no longer living, but committed to the flames of Tophet. " To 
render our conceptions more intense, the worm is added to the 
fire, and both are represented as undying. That the contrast 
hitherto maintained may not be forgotten even in this closing 
scene, the men within the walls are seen by the light of these 
funeral fires, coming forth and gazing at the ghastly scene, not 
with delight as some interpreters pretend, but as the text ex- 
pressly says, with horror. In its primary meaning, this is a 
prophecy of ruin to the unbelieving Jews — apostate Israel." 

The other opinion is that of Albert Barnes, who derives the 
figure " from a scene where a people whose lands have been 
desolated by mighty armies, are permitted to go forth after a 
decisive battle, and to walk over the field of the slain, and to see 
the dead and putrefying bodies of their once forijiidable enemies." 
Of this, the destruction of Sennacherib's host would be a notable 
example. Either derivation explains the language used. It is 
not the immortality of the individual soul, but the raultittide of 
those who finally perish, that challenges the unquenched fire, 
and the unfailing worm. They are as the sand of the sea (Rev. 
XX. 8). Their number suggests an immortal feast for worms, 
like the " supper of the great God " to which the fowls of heaven 

1 "For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath 
made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of 
the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." Isa. xxx. 33. 



200 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



are invited, in Rev. xix. 17, 18. Hence the expression in Isa. 
Ixvi. 15, IG : "Behold the Lord will come with fire, and with 
his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, 
and his rebuke with flames of fire ; and the slain of the Lord 
shall be many." 

Thus the words in Isa. Ixvi. 24, are in two ways explained by 
reference to the scenes of time ; and in one or other of these 
explanations nearly all the commentators are agreed. It follows 
that to extend the allusion — as many of them do — to an eternal 
scene, explains nothing, and therefore proves nothing. It is an 
assumption of the thing to be proved. And although the words 
as quoted by our Savior can not refer so immediately to the 
valley of Hinnom, or to the destruction of an army, but are 
applied directly to God's final judgment, yet to suppose that they 
now indicate the soul's immortality is no less an assumption of 
the thing to be proved, and it is to deduce indestructibility from 
the images of utter destruction. But in the context the hypoth- 
esis of entering into life halt or maimed or with one eye, as 
strongly intimates the literal destruction of one's being, soul and 
body, as the mention of " carcases " in the original passage. 

But the explanation of these passages will be incomplete with- 
out a consideration of that vexed passage in Mark ix. 49 : " For 
every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be 
salted with salt," in which a few commentators find the eternal 
conservation of the lost. All such argument, at least, is done 
away by the remarks of Hammond, who says : " The word salted 
(ulLodriaeTai) is ma^e answerable to the Hebrew ri^?^, and is set 
by Symmachus (Isa. li. 6) to signify consumed, in like manner 
as the whole burnt offering is consumed — burnt all of it with 
fire ; which is answerable to the unquenchable jire (nvp daSecrov) 
going before ; and so the meaning of this expression will be here, 
that that first sort of men, the apostates, or wicked, carnal Chris- 
tians, . . . shall be used as the burnt offerings are, — they 
shall have fire instead of salt. But the pious minded Christian, 
like the minchah, shall have the salt, the grace of God and 
Christian doctrine ; and by God's help make use of it, to eat up 
all his corruptions and degrees of putrefaction left in him, and 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



201 



also to be a principle of union and peaceable-mindedness in him ; 
as among other uses of salt it is said to be unitive (evcjrtnog). . . 
But it is not unlikely that in this place, and in that of Isaiah, 
ukLaQT]aeTai may be put for ulcjOrj'yeTaL (or avaludrjoETaL) which signi- 
fies first to he caught^ then to he consumed; so dlcjoi.^ (2 Pet. ii. 
12) \^ preying upon, and, joined with <^dopa, destroying or consum- 
ing. So in Isa. Ixvi., after the mention of God's pleading by 
fire (ver. 16) is added: "they shall be consumed together 
(avaludTjoovraL, ver. 17)." This yicw is supported by the remarks 
of Whitby, which are the more significant because he has just ex- 
patiated on the notion of the perpetuity of the condemned. He 
says : " It is the property of salt to preserve things from corrup- 
tion ; hence a covenant of salt is put for an everlasting or invio- 
lable covenant. So Num. xviii. 19 : 'It is a covenant of salt 
for ever {akbg aluviov) before the Lord ; ' and God gave David 
and his sons kings over Israel for ever by a covenant of salt (2 
Chr. xiii. 5). Whence the Jews say, salt was to season all their 
sacrifices, to signify that they preserved their souls from corrup- 
tion, as the salt did the sacrifice ; Philo, that salt is a symbol 
of the perpetuity of all things, preserving that on which it is 
sprinkled.^ And on those words : ' With every oblation you 
shall offer salt,' — ' By this,' saith Philo, ' he signifies the perpet- 
ual duration of them ; salt being the preservation of bodies next 
to the soul itself ; for as the soul is the cause that our bodies are 
not corrupted, so is salt, preserving them for a long time, and 
rendering them in a manner incorruptible (dvadavan^ovTeg, immor- 
talizing them).' - 

7. "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in Hke 
manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, 
are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." — 
Jude ver. 7. " Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them ofi" 
and cast them from thee ; for it is better for thee to enter into life halt or 
'maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlast- 
ing fire." — Matt, xviii. 8. " Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, 
Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels." — Matt. xxv. 41. 

1 De Victimis, 0pp. II. 240 (al. 837). 

2 De Sacrificantibus, 0pp. II. 255 (al. 851). 



202 



THE SCRIPTUKAL ARGUMENT. 



The phrase nvp aluvLov, used in each of these passages, is mani- 
festly equivalent to the Tzvp ucSeoTov of Matt. iii. 12 ; Luke iii. 17, 
and Mark ix. 43, 45. In two of these passages (Matt, xviii. 18, 
and Mark ix. 43, 45) the phrases are used interchangeably, in 
different accounts of the same discourse of our Savior. If one 
of them indicates a complete destruction, the other cannot indi- 
cate an immortality of the lost; and we might here rest the 
argument. 

But it will be better to show Iiow the adjectives ucSeoTov and 
alojvLov should denote the same thing. This is told in a word. 
The former describes the fierceness and all-consuming violence 
of the fire; the latter, its irreparable effect. The eternal liYQ i?, 
that which destroys utterly and /or ever. This eternity of effect, 
which we noted in Mark iii. 29 and Heb. vi. 2, has been remarked 
by commentators on one of the passages in hand. Thus Witsius, 
after saying that the words in Jude, v. 7, are " not to be restricted 
to that fire wherewith those cities were burnt, but to be extended 
to the flames of hell, with which the lewd inhabitants of those 
cities are at this very day tormented," adds : " But it is true of 
both, that they were burnt with fire ; which with respect to the 
towns may in some measure be said to be eternal, they being so 
consumed as that they never shall or can be restored." ^ And 
Whitby: "I conceive that they (the inhabitants) are said to 
* suffer the vengeance of eternal fire,' not because their souls are 
at present punished in hell-fire, but because they and their cities 
perished by that fire from heaven, which brought a perpetual and 
irreparable destruction on them and their cities." And Bloom- 
field: "On the 'nvp aluvLov commentators (I think) require too 
much. Benson explains it : a fire which burnt till it utterly con- 
sumed them. See Whitby. It is not necessary to press on the 
aiuvtov. We need only suppose that the Apostle's meaning is, 
*they are publicly set forth (rcpoKeivrac, which is a forensic term), 
for an everlasting example (in their fiery destruction) of the 
punishment God sometimes inflicts for sin in this world, which is 
but a faint type of that which he hath reserved for the next." ^ 



1 Economy of the Covenants, b. 1, c. 5. 



2 Critical Digest. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 203 



Very true ; a fire tliat lUterl j consumes, is a " faint type " of a 
destruction ever going on and ever incomplete. Hammond speaks 
of " the utterly irreversible destruction, such as fell on Sodom, 
called aluvLov Trip, eternal fire, utterly consumptive." ^ Episcopius 
takes the passage in the same sense.^ Adam Clarke takes it as 
applying either to the inhabitants or to the cities, and says : " In 
either case the word Trvp aluviov signifies an eternally destructive 
fire ; it has no end in the punishment of the wicked Sodomites, 
. . . it has no end in the destruction of the cities ; they were 
totally burnt up, and never were and never can be rebuilt. In 
either of these cases the word aluvLog has its proper and gram- 
matical meaning." And Eosenmiiller : "We may understand 
Tcvp aluvtov of a destroying fire ; that is, one which utterly wasted 
and reduced to nothing. But we may also understand a fire 
perpetually smoking." 

Here is a shght addition to the sense of aiuvioc, which, how- 
ever, does not all conflict Avith that just given. Those cities 
became an eternal monument of desolation. Thus Cajetan: 
They " were burned with fire from heaven, of which conflagration 
the traces still remain and ever will remain to the end of the 
world ; to wit, a continual desolation, a Dead Sea, constantly 
smoking and exhaling pitch and sulphur wherewith it was 
burned ; admitting neither fish nor any living thing ; but speedily 
destroying them ; producing apples of emptiness and ashes ; so 
that Sodom - has the appearance of a past fire, and is a vivid 
example of what will be in gehenna." Be it so ; if the antitype 
is true to the type, what is the immortality of the lake of fire 
and brimstone — the Dead Sea of the world to come ? 

And these cities were an example (6eh/(ia) in fact, as well as 
intent. " Nothing was more known and celebrated among au- 
thors, sacred and profane, Jewish, Christian, and heathen writers, 
than 'the fire that fell down upon Pentapolis,' or the five cities 
of Sodom ; they being mentioned still in Scripture as the cities 
which God overthrew with a perpetual desolation ; in the Apoc- 
ryphal writings, ' the waste land that yet smoketh.' " ^ 

] 1 Comm. on Rev. xx. 6. 2 Responsio ad Ixiv. Qusst., 62. 

8 Whitby. Comp. Deut. X3ix. 23, 24; Hos. xi. 8; Wisd. x. 7; 3 Macc. ii. 5- 

I 



204 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



It is here worthy of note that the adjective " suffering " 
(vTrexovoaL) in Jude, ver. 7, refers to the cities rather than to the 
inhabitants. And it only remains for us to answer an objection 
derived from the nature of the human soul, which is supposed to 
preclude the proof of an utter destruction from some of the pas- 
sages now considered. It is best stated and answered in the 
words of Whately : " Supposing the soul to be immaterial, it can 
not be destroyed by literal fire and worms. That is true ; but no 
more can it suffer from these. We all know that no fire, literally 
so called, can give us any pain imless it reaches our bodies. 
The ' fire,' therefore, and the worm,' must at any rate, it would 
seem, be figuratively so called, — something that is to a soul 
what fire and worms are to a body. And as the effect of worms 
or fire is, not to preserve the body that they prey upon, but to 
consume, destroy, and put an end to it, it would follow, if the 
correspondence hold good, that the fire figuratively so called, 
which is \ repared for the condemned, is something that is really 
to destroy and put an end to them ; and is called ' everlasting' or 
' unquenchable ' fire, to denote that they are not to be saved from 
it, but that their destruction is to be final." ^ 

8. " The sinners in Zion are afraid ; fearfulness hath surprised the hypo- 
crites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire ? Who among 
us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? " — Isa. xxxiii. 14. 

These are doubtless the works of the unbelieving Jews, vvdio 

had advised ungodly alliances with the surrounding nations, and 

— 2 Pet. ii. 6: "• Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, con- 
demned them with an ovei'throw, making them an ensample unto those that 
after should live ungodly;" — Philo, De Vita Mosis, 1. 2: "The cinders, 
brimstone and smoke, and the obscure flame as it were of a fire burning, yet 
appearing about Syria^ are memorials of the pepetual evils which happened to 
them;" — Josephus, Antiq. 1. 1, c. 11, § 1; — Strabo, Geog. 1. 16: "Man}-- 
signs indicate that this is a burnt district; for we find burnt rocks and an ashy 
soil, and drops of pitch distilling from the rocks, and bubbling streams of fetid 
odor; " — Tacitus, Hist. 1. 5, c. 7 : " Not far hence are the plains which they 
say were formerly cities, and were struck with a thunderbolt, and afterwards 
burned with fire from heaven; " — Solinus, Polyhist, 1. 35 ; — Diod. Sic. Hist. 
1. 19, c. 98. Well may Hengsteuberg say : "As the fire and brimstone point 
to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, so it is very natural to suppose that 
allusion is made to the dead sea as the earthly image of hell." Comm. on Rev- 
xix. 20. 1 Future State, c. 8. 



SUPPOSED IMMOETALITY OF THE LOST. 



205 



arc now terror-stricken at the dangers that impend. Some think 
the "devouring fire" refers to the presence of God, which 
affrights the wicked as if it were a "consuming fire" (Deut. iv. 
24). More precisely, this would be the Shekinah, threatening 
to devour them, as the adherents of Dathan and Abiram were 
consumed. By others it is referred to the fury of the Assyrians, 
raging as a fire (Pro v. xxx. 16; Isa. x. 7; xiv. 6) ; or to their 
ancient and inveterate enmity (Ezek. xxv. 15) ; or to the actual 
invasion and devastation of the land by them. Hence the 
remark of Grotius, in the style of some of the passages adduced 
under Matt. iii. 12 : "The fire that is not quenched; such they 
thought to be the Assyrian power." 

Eut we prefer the exegesis which refers the passage to the 
destruction of the Assyrians, in which the unbelieving Jews 
feared they might share. Hence the expression in verses 10-12, 
where the Assyrian army is represented as awaiting a sudden 
and utter destruction : " Now will I arise, saith the Lord ; now 
will I be exalted ; now will I lift up myself. Ye shall conceive 
chaff; ye shall bring forth stubble ; your breath, as fire, shall 
devour you. And the people shall be as the burnings of lime ; as 
thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire." This had been 
already foretold in ch. xxvii. 4 : " Fury is not in me [i. e. I am 
no longer angry with my people]. Who will set the briers and 
thorns against me in battle? I would go through them; I would 
burn them together."^ The prophecy appears as history in ch. 
xxxvii. 36: "Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote 
in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score and five 
thousand ; and when they arose early in the morning, behold 
they were all dead corpses." According to the custom of the 
eastern nations, these bodies should be burned. And on the 
phrase "burnings of lime" it is remarked by Dr. Alexander, 
that the same word "burnings" is applied (Jer. xxxiv. 5) to the 
aromatic fumigations used at an'cient burials [i. e. in the funeral 
pyre], to which there may be allusion here. The ideas expressed 
are those of quickness and intensity. The thorns are perhaps 

1 See also ver, 11, and compare ch. x. 16-18 ; John xv. 6. 
18 



206 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



described as cut up, to suggest that they are dry, and therefore 
more combustible." 

The effect of this display of divine power is to alarm those 
who have not trusted in God, and who can not know Him as 
their deliverer. " Who among us," they exclaim, " shall dwell 
with (this) devouring fire ? Who among us shall dwell with 
(these) perpetual burnings ?" Thus Dr. Alexander renders the 
passage, v*^ith whom agree Luther, Vitringa, Le Clerc, Matthew 
Henry, and Lowth. 

Here again, to extend the meaning of the passage to the future 
world explains nothing and proves nothing. And if we allow the 
extended sense, it would only prove the very doctrine we main- 
tain. A parallel passage in Rev. vi. 17, is significant of any 
thing but the eternal endurance of the wicked : " For the great 
day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand ? " 
With which should be compared the expression " both soul and 
body," in Isa. x. 18, and Matt. x. 28, which, if strictly taken, 
would show that the first and second deaths were included, the 
latter named in anticipation, or both to be actually combined in 
one. 

9. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that be- 
lieveth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on 
him." — John iii. 36. 

How, it is asked, can the wrath of God abide on those who 
do not exist ? It is sufficient to reply that the state of death was 
deemed by the Jews an evil. Death past all hope of return to 
life was no less an evil. And by a natural dramatism, the sub- 
tlety of thoughts ever transcending the subtlety of words, such a 
destiny might be expressed in language which, grammatically 
taken, implies existence. The idea is, God's wrath shuts up the 
wicked in eternal non-existence. If they would escape they 
shall be turned back^ into Sheol, and all the nations that forget 
God." 

1 The Hebrew iTJJ always denotes a return, or turning back, to a former 
place or state. This rendering of Ps. ix. 17, may give the true distinction be- 
tween ths destiny of the righteous and the wicked, who all enter into Sheol. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



207 



But there is a truer exegesis of the passage, which makes it 
retrospective. See ver. 18. The world is already under con- 
demnation, and in case of unbelief, the sentence continues in 
force, awaiting until it be executed. This agrees with what 
Calvin says: "I am not dissatisfied with the view given by 
Augustine, that the word 'abideth' is used to inform us that 
from the womb we were appointed to death, because we were 
all born the children of wrath (Eph. ii. 3). At least I willingly 
admit an allusion of this sort, provided we hold the true and 
simple meaning to be what I have stated, that death hangs over 
all unbelievers, and keeps them oppressed and overwhelmed in 
such a manner that they can never escape." So Erasmus, 
Lightfoot, Kuinoel, Doddridge, Alford. Comp. Num. xv. 31. 

III. 10. ''He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is 
filthv, let him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous 
still ; and he that is holy, let liim be holy still.'' — Rev. xxii. 11. 

Even the elder Edwards, who adduces this passage in support 
of the theodicy of eternal sinfulness, remarks upon it : " Thus 
Christ takes leave of his Church till his last coming, warning 
them to improve the means of grace they have, and informing 
them that they are never to have any other." ^ This suggests 
the true sense, which is stated by the Venerable Bede : " Evil 
men are permitted to wax Avorse, or to reach the climax of wick- 
edness, so they shall fmd God's judgment to be just." It is 
given more fully by Lowman : " The providence of God vvdll 
indeed permit things to continue in this world, just as these , 
things represent the state of them. Men of evil principles and 
corrupt hearts will continue in acts of injustice and oppression, 
and to promote false religion and w^ickedness, notwithstanding 
all the cautions of religion and judgments of Providence. Yet 
.the cautions, directions, and encouragements of these prophecies, 
and the judgments of Providence foretold in them, v,'ill have a 
better effect on good minds, to their perseverance in truth, right- 
eousness; and holiness." And the more critical examination of 



1 Works, I. 626. 



208 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



the principal words confines their significance to the scenes of 
time. Thus Daubuz : " ' He that wrongeth ' (or the unjust) de- 
notes, in a peculiar manner, throughout this prophecy, the perse- 
cution and murder of the saints. . . . ' He which is filthy,' 
seems principally to denote those who shall be guilty of idol 
worship. . . . These prophecies will be of great use, as 
they shall contribute to the constancy of the righteous and the 
holy, though they should not effect a general reformation in the 
world, though men of evil principles and wicked hearts shall still 
remain persecutors and idolaters." This view is supported by 
the Syriac and Arabic versions ; by liosenmiiller, who cites 
similar expressions from the classic writers ; ^ by Cornelius a 
Lapide, Eichhorn, Poole, Henry, Andrew Fuller, Bloomfield, 
Hengstenberg, Jenks, and Stuart. 

IV. 11. "These are wells without water, clouds that are carried Avith a 
tempest ; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." — 2 Pet. ii. 
17. "Raging Avaves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering 
stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."- Jude v. 13. 

" We came into the world," says Clement of Rome "as it were 
out of a sepulchre, and from darkness." ^ This expression sug- 
gests that the term " darkness " was with the Jews a synonym 
of chaos and non-existence. Blank nothingness, where no light 
is, appears as a blackness, and is more naturally conceived as 
a dread something than as a nothing. The concrete expression 
is more lively and vigorous than the abstract, which comes as 
an after thought. Hence such terms as "nothingness" and 
" annihilation " were rarely used by the ancients, though they 
are now common. The state of things before the world was, is 
described in the oldest of books as a Tolm vau Bohu — something 
empty and void ; not unform.ed matter, but nothingness — 

" Illimitable, without hound, 
Without division, where length, breadth, and height, 
And time, and place, are lost." 8 

1 Sallust, Fragm.: " Quando talis es, maneas in sententia- " — Arrian, IV. 19; 

2Ep. to the Corinthians, sec. 38, transl. by Abp. Wake, "outer darkness." 
3 See Taylor Lewis, Six Days of Creation, c. 7. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



209 



And upon the face of this " deep " was Darkness. In Gentile 
speech, " Chaos and old Night " were the significant Nothing out 
of which all things were created. This was the outer limit, the 
utter darkness, upon which creative Light is ever encroaching, 
as the Spirit of God hovers over it to impart new being. And 
His wrath is the fire that remands thither all that has no place 
in His dominion. 

Some have thought the phrase " outer darkness " is an allu- 
sion to some dark, dreary prison in Jerusalem, where malefactors 
were condemned to perish by hunger, want, and cold. ^ More 
natural is the allusion to gehenna, as a gloomy abode of death. 
Thus the Targum on 1 Sam. ii. 9 : " The wicked shall be avenged 
in gehenna, in darkness." (Compare on Ps. Ixxxiii. 13.) The 
terror of this darkness, even aside from the notion of punish- 
ment, is finely depicted in the Septuagint and Vulgate transla- 
tions of Job X. 21, 22 : "Before I go and return no more, to a 
land that is dark and covered with the mist of death ; a land of 
misery and darkness, where is the shadow of death, and no order, 
but eternal horror dwells." 

The expression in the epistle of Jude is well illustrated by the 
Syriac version : " Shooting stars, to whom is reserved the black- 
ness of darkness for ever." With this compare the passage in 
the book of Enoch : " Mercy shall be showed unto the righteous 
man ; upon him shall be conferred integrity and power for ever. 
In goodness and righteousness shall he exist, and shall walk in 
everlasting light. But sin shall perish in eternal darkness, nor 
be seen from this time forward for evermore " (xci. 3 ; comp. 
Dan. xii. 3 ; Pro v. xxiv. 20). 

The expressions, " wailing," and "gnashing of teeth," which 
are connected with the "outer darkness" (Matt. viii. 12; xxii. 
13; XXV. 30), and with the "furnace of fire" (Matt, xiii ; 42, 
5; ), are here explained by reference to Ps. cxii. 10. They de- 
noie, not an ever-subsisting malignity and contention, but the 
rage of envy and shame, in disappointment of eternal life. " The 
wicked shall see it, and shall be grieved ; he shall gnash with 

1 " Et ipsis tenebris," adds Woif, Cur» Philol. Matt. viii. 12. 
18* 



210 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



his teeth, and melt away ; the desire of the wicked shall perish." 
The "portion with the hypocrites" (Matt. xxiv. 51) may be an 
allusion to Isa. xxxiii. 14. And the expression in Kev. xxii. 15, 
" without are dogs, etc.," should be compared with Luke, xiii. 
28, and Ps. cxii. 10. The radical idea is that of exclusion, from 
the kingdom of light and life. 

The expression in Jude, ver. 6, "reserved in everlasting 
chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day," 
obviously denotes an imprisonment from which there is no release 
for the better. A similar phrase is used by Josephus, in speak- 
ing of the tyrant John as condemned by the Romans to " eternal 
imprisonment (Seofiolc alcovloig) ; " ^ and a passage still more similar 
occurs in Cicero, who says that Catiline " does not hesitate to 
commit Publius Lentulus to eternal darkness and chains (aeternis 
tenebris vinculisque)."^ It is properly illustrated by the fol- 
lowing, taken from the book of Enoch ; " Bind Azazyel hand 
and foot ; cast him into darkness ; and opening the desert which 
is in Dudael, cast him in there. Throw upon him hurled and 
pointed stones, covering him with darkness ; there shall he re- 
main for ever ; cover his face, that he may not see the light. 
And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire " 
(x. 6-9). " There shall they be taken into the lowest depths 
of the fire in torments, and in confinement shall they be shut up 
for ever. Immediately after this shall he (Samyaza), together 
with them, burn and perish " (x. 17, comp. ver. 15, above). 

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in like manner, 
simply denotes that there can be no improvement of the condi- 
tion of those who die out of Christ. • Aside from this, it proves 
nothing beyond the judgment. It belongs to the intermediate 
state ; for the torment of the rich man here described is not that 
of Gehenna, but of Hades. In this view it will be considered in 
a subsequent discussion. We need here only remark that the 
distinction between Hades or Sheol, and Gehenna, is strictly 
jbserved in the Bible, and is often remarked by the commen- 
ators. The former is the Underworld, the place of disembodied 

1 Wars, b. 6, c. 9, § 4. 2 Orat. IV. in Catil. c. 5. 

« See Campbell, Gospels, Dissert. VI.; — Sears, Atiianasia, Part III., c. 4. 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



211 



souls, or the state of the dead. The latter is the " furnace of 
fire," the "lake of fire and brimstone," the unquenchable or 
eternal fire which consumes utterly and destroys for ever. The 
term (yeevva) occurs in twelve instances in the New Testament, 
viz : Matt. v. 22, 29, 30 ; x. 28 ; xviii. 9 ; xxiii. 15, 33 ; Mark 
ix. 43, 45, 47 ; Luke xii. 5 ; James iii. G. Wetstein, in his 
note on Matt. v. 22, remarks : "All the punishments of more 
atrocious crimes were inflicted, either by God or men ; severe 
punishments, indeed, by the judgments of twenty-three men ; 
those more severe by the Sanhedrim ; but the severest of all by 
God, in the excision (r.^iD) either of body, or of soul or of both. 
Of this punishment Christ is speaking here, and in verses 29, 
30, and ch. x. 28." And of the Jewish use of the term gehenna 
he cites among others the following examples : From the Jeru- 
salem Targum on Gen. iii. 24: " He made gehenna for the wicked, 
like a two-edged sword, cutting either way ; and in the midst of 
it, sparks and coals, burning up (comhurentes) the wicked." 
From the Targum on Ps. xxxvii. 20 : " And they shall be con- 
sumed in the smoke of gehenna." On Eecl. viii. 10 : "They 
have gone to be consumed in gehenna." And on Isa. xxxi. 9, 
gehenna is spoken of as " a fire which goes forth from the bodies 
of the wicked and sets them on fire ; for it is said : Ye shall 
conceive chaff, and bring forth stubble ; your breath, as fire, 
shall devour you." This may illustrate the peculiar use of the 
word in James iii. 6. 

12. "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever; 
and they have no rest, day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, 
and whosoever rcceiveth the mark of his name." — Rev. xiv. 11. "And 
again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever." — 
xix. 3. 

The first of these passages refers properly to the scenes of 
time, and not to the final judgment. The chapter contains no 
allusion to the resurrection, or to the opening of the books. It 
opens with a dramatic representation of heaven as a witness of 
the tragic events of earth. In the mingling of mercy with judg- 
ment, the " everlasting gospel " is proclaimed (ver. 6). Because 



212 



THE SCKIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



the time is one of unprecedented distress, those who die are 
happy in being saved from the evil to come. " Blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth, that they may rest 
from their labors " (ver. 13). The days of trouble will try " the 
patience of the saints" (ver. 12). The chapter closes with an 
account of " blood, even unto the horse-bridles, by the space of a 
thousand and six hundred furlongs." And the very expression : 
" who worship the beast and his image," seems to refer to the 
earthly conduct and condition of idolatrous people. The passage 
proves an earthly immortality, if it proves any ; and the same 
may be said of the similar passage in ch. ix. 6, sometimes adduced 
in this argument : " And in those days shall men seek death, 
and shall not find it ; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee 
from them." 

But when we look to the context of the latter passage, we 
find that " Babylon," which is doubtless the same idolatrous 
polity under another name, is utterly destroyed. See ch. xviii. 
8-10, 15, 18, 21. " She shall be utterly burned with fire." She 
" shall be found no more at all." Her desolation strikes terror 
into the hearts of those who were seduced by her ; they "bewail 
her, and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, 
standing afar off for fear of her torment." What is this but the 
torment of being utterly destroyed ? The figure of " smoke 
ascending " is borrowed from the destruction of the cities of the 
plain (Gen. xix. 28), and was already employed by Isaiah in 
describing the desolations of Edora : " The streams thereof shall 
be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and 
the land thereof shall become pitch. It shall not be quenched, 
night nor day ; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever and ever ; 
from generation to generation shall it lie waste ; none shall pass 
through it for ever and ever " (xxxiv. 9, 10). 

Daubuz, one of the ablest and most learned commentators on 
the Apocalyse, and who states very strongly the common view 
of the destiny of the lost, finds no proof of that doctrine in these 
passages. He illustrates the view we have given of them by 
citations from Homer (Iliad, xxi. 522), Yirgil (JEneid, iii. 2, 3), 
and Seneca (Consol. ad Polyb. c. 1), and says : " So then, the 



SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 



213 



smoke ascending for ever and ever, is not to signify a continual 
burning ; but by a metonymy of the efficient for the effect, to 
signify that it is burnt for ever, and never to be restored." This 
derivation of the language is sustained by Cocceius, Eichhorn, 
Newton, Fuller, Clarke, Hengstenberg, Stuart, and denied, per- 
haps, by none. That one of these (Hengstenberg) should take 
the language in either passage as " an image of the torments of 
hell," in the common view, is simply to assume the point in 
question ; to explain no word and to prove no thing. It strangely 
deduces an immortal life from the imagery of desolation and 
death. 

One passage yet remains, a frequent dernier ressort to prove 
the immortality of the lost : 

V. 13. "And tliey went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed 
the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down 
from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived 
them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false 
prophet are ; and [they] shall be tormented day and night for ever and 
ever." — Rev. xx. 9, 10. 

This passage cannot be claimed as proving directly any thing 
beyond the eternal existence of Satan, the Beast, and the False 
Prophet. The argument from it for the immortality of those 
who ivorship the Beast or the False Prophet, is inferential ; and 
to infer simply an eternal succession of their worshippers, is quite 
as good reasoning. Moreover, the argument for the immortality 
of all the wicked must be deduced from what is here supposed 
to be intimated of only a part of them ; for many generations 
of the heathen, and all the ancient world, are utter strangers to 
the Beast and the False Prophet ; and such perhaps are " the 
nations in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog," who 
are here described as deceived by Satan, and devoured by fire 
from God out of heaven (vv. 8, 9). Karetpayev, says Stuart, is 
" intensive, to eat up, devour, so that it denotes utter excision." 
The argument from Matt. xxv. 41, must also assume, that if 
the devil and his angels " are strictly immortal, and undestroyed 
by the " eternal fire," the same is true of wicked men. 



214 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



The whole argument must begin, then, with proving that 
Satan, the Beast, and the False Prophet, are immortal. By 
parity of reasoning. Death and Hades, named in ver. 13, and 
appointed to the same " lake of fire," are also immortal. But 
this is not allowed. Thus Nitzsch, speaking of the second death, 
remarks : " The idea of annihilation becomes more prominent 
when we consider that even death and Hades (which shall, abso- 
lutely be no more) are cast into the lake of fire." And Stuart : 
" Hades and its king, dava-og, as appears by ver. 14, are to be 
cast into the lake of fire, after the judgment-day ; i. e. they are 
to be utterly destroyed." But he adds : The place for disem- 
bodied spirits will be of no further use, after the resurrection of 
the body and its re-union Vvdth the soul. Death will then have 
completed his work, and will therefore be no more." 

This is remarkable. Death and Hades, symbolical person- 
ages, are supposed to cease from being ; while their subjects, 
"the dead," — whose names, after their resurrection, are not 
found in the book of life, who are cast into the same lake of fire 
(ver. 15), in which gehenna both soul and body are destroyed 
(Matt. X. 28), and which is the "second death," — are supposed 
to be immortal ! Who does not see, rather, that Hades and 
Thanatos are only other names for the dead ; or, at least, that 
the destruction of their kingdom includes that of all who were 
its proper subjects ? The righteous, over whom " Death hath 
no dominion," live ; but not those who loved Death. " They 
follow him that are of his side " (Wisd. ii. 25). 

But if Death and his own are destroyed, why not the Beast 
and the False Prophet in like manner? How are they immor- 
tal without their worshipers — either singly, or in endless suc- 
cession ? All are alike symbolical personages, and all must 
share the fate of those who constitute them. All argument from 
their nature shows that if Death and Hades cease to be, so like- 
wise do the Beast and the False Prophet. Of the party of 
Satan, — the Gog and Magog destroyed by fire as the prelude 
of these final judgments, — it may be even doubted whether they 



1 Chi-istian Doctrine, § 219, note 3. 



SUPPOSED niMORTALITY OF THE LOST. 215 

appear at all in the resurrection ; it is more natural to suppose 
that after their summary judgment, that of Satan, not a sym- 
bolical personage, along with that of the Beast and the False 
Prophet, remained yet to be described. 

But why are they said to be " tormented, day and night, for 
ever and ever ?" This might be said of the Beast and the False 
Prophet as impersonations, henceforth without power or wor- 
shipers. Compare what is said of Babylon, ch. xviii. 7, 8, 19. 
But we think the language describes their utter and irrevocable 
destruction, in a dramatic form which is quite consistent with the 
general structure of the book, and of which dramatism we have 
already found so many examples. To those before cited,^ we 
will only add here the language of taunting and insult addressed 
by the dead to the fallen Babylon, in Isa. xiv. 9, 10, 12 : " Hades 
from beneath is moved because of thee for to meet thee at thy 
coming ; he rouseth for thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs 
of the earth ; he maketh to rise up from their thrones all the 
kings of the nations. All of them shall accost thee, and shall say 
unto thee : Art thou, even thou too, become weak as we ? Art 
thou made like unto us ? . . . How art thou fallen from 
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! Art cut down to the 
earth thou that didst subdue the nations ! " (Lowth's translation.) 
And Ecclus. xxi. 10, 11 : "The congregation of sinners is like 
tow heaped together ; and the end of them is a flame of fire. 
The way of sinners is made plain with stones ; and in their end 
is hell, and darkness, and pains." 

But will Satan actually cease from being? Is he indeed 
mortal ? The prophecies all look that way. Our translators 
have indeed dealt somewhat tenderly with the great Adversary, 
in Gen. iii. 15, where the true sense is that the Seed of the 
woman shall crush^ the head of the Serpent. The words in 
Heb. ii. 14, and 1 John iii. 8, express indeed the dispossession of 

1 Acts ii. 24 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 6 ; Ps. xviii. 4, 5 ; cxvi. 3 ; Job x. 21, 22 (comp. xxi. 
17); Ezek. xxxii. 24, 25, 30; Wisd. iii. 1-4; xiv. 8-10; Ecclus. vi. 19; x. 13; 
xix. 3; Enoch x. 6, 9, 15, 17; xix. 2; xxiv. 9; xc. 11. Those from the Apoc- 
ryphal Books may be found again by means of the Index (p. viii). 

2 See Gesenius' Lexicon, last od. 



216 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



Satan, rather than his final destruction. But that doom, in com- 
mon with the destruction of every power hostile to God, is told in 
Daniel : " I beheld then because of the voice of the great words 
which the horn spake ; I beheld even till the Beast was slain, 
and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. As 
concerning the rest of the Beasts, they had their dominion taken 
away ; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time " 
(vii. 11, 12). See also Mat. xxv. 41, and pp. 202, sq. 

§ 5. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 

The now prevalent doctrine of immortality has been sup- 
ported recently in an indirect scriptural argument. If it was a 
prevalent error of the Jews in Christ's time, why, it is asked, 
did he not expose it by direct and explicit asseveration ? Was 
it not a culpable and enormous neglect, if the Great Teacher 
failed to point out and condemn so fearful a delusion ? Could 
he for a moment allow his hearers to indulge the persuasion of 
an absolute immortality, or to feel the terror of an eternal mis- 
ery, if either doctrine were totally false ? ^ 

Our reply is three-fold. 1. The argument is convertible. 
Why did not Christ give an explicit sanction to the doctrine of 
man's immortality ? Why did he never speak of man as an 
immortal being ? Why did not he who brought life and immor- 
tality to light, and who had the words of eternal life, relieve the 
silence of the Scriptures by a single direct mention or assertion of 
man's immortal nature? Why did he say nothing of eternal woe? 

II. We challenge the proof that the doctrines in question 
were prevalent among the Jews in Christ's time. Reserving 
the later history of Jewish opinion for a subsequent discussion, 
where we shall show that their Talmud has not recognized these 
doctrines, and that their symbols have never asserted them, we 
will here notice three arguments that have been offered to show 
that they did prevail when Christ was on earth. 

1. From the hook of Enoch, The following passages have 
been cited : " Moreover, abundant is their suffering until the 

1 T. M. Post, New Englander, May, 1856, p. 168, sq. 



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 



217 



time of the great judgment, the castigation, and the torment of 
those -who eternally execrate, whose souls are punished and 
bound there for ever. A receptacle of this sort has been formed 
for the souls of unrighteous men and of sinners ; of those who 
have committed crime, and associated with the impious whom 
they resemble. Their souls shall not be annihilated in the day 
of judgment, neither shall they arise from this place" (xxii. 12, 
14). "Never shall they obtain mercy, saith the Lord of 
spirits" (xxxix. 2). "The countenances likewise of the mighty 
shall He east down, filling them with confusion. Darkness 
shall be their habitation, and worms their bed ; nor from that 
bed shall they hope to be again raised, because they exalted not 
the name of the Lord of spirits " (xlvi. 4). " But has it not been 
shown to them, that, when to the receptacle of the dead their 
souls shall be made to descend, their evil deeds shall become 
their greatest torment ? Into darkness, into the snare, and into 
flame which shall burn to the great judgment, shall their spirits 
enter ; and the great judgment shall take effect for ever and 
ever" (ciii. 5).^ 

Two questions are here to be settled: 1. Do these passages 
decide the doctrine of the book ? 2. If so, do they determine 
the doctrine of the Jews ? We think neither. For, in the first 
place, the book is as silent respecting immortality as the Scrip- 
tures themselves. The citations before made also show that 
some of the above expressions may denote the eternity of effect. 
Moreover the style of the book is highly dramatic. Thus in the 
last chapter the righteous and the wicked are set in contrast, 
and it is said " sinners shall cry out, beholding them" (cv. 27 j, 
though it was said in ver. 21 : "You, who have labored, shall 
wait in those days, until the evil doers be consumed, and the 
power of the guilty be annihilated. Wait, until sin pass away : 
for their names shall be blotted out of the holy books ; their 
seed shall be destroyed, and their spirits slain." And the 
expression : " their souls shall not be annihilated in the day of 
judgment," does not necessarily imply that they will oiever be 

1 Dr. Davidson, in Kitto's Cyclopedia; M. Stuart, Bib. Repos., July, 1840. 
19 



218 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



annihilated. It should be compared with the following pas- 
sages : " They shall be brought from every part of the earth, 
and be cast into a judgment of fire. They shall perish in wrath, 
and by a judgment overpowering them for ever. Then shall the 
roots of iniquity be cut off ; sinners shall perish by the sword ; 
and blasphemers be annihilated every where. All who walk in 
the path of iniquity shall perish for ever" (xc, 11, 13, 17). 
"And to this were brought the blind sheep ; which being judged, 
and found guilty, were all thrust into that abyss of fire on the 
earth, and burnt " (Ixxxix. 35). When all shall be punished 
and consumed for ever, this shall be bestowed on the righteous 
and humble " (xxiv. 9). " Our spirits have been consumed, 
lessened, and diminished" (ciii. 7 ; comp. Isai. xiv. 9, sq.). On 
the other hand it is said of the righteous : " None shall perish in 
the presence of the Lord of spirits, nor shall any be capable of 
perishing" (Ix. 7). "The saints shall exist in the light of the 
sun, and the elect in the light of everlasting life, the days of 
whose life shall never terminate ; nor shall the days of the saints 
be numbered, who seek for light, and obtain righteousness with 
the Lord of spirits" (Ivi. 3). " These however die and perish. 
But you from the beginning were made spiritual, possessing a 
life which is eternal, and not subject to death for ever " (xv. 
4, 6). 

In the second place, respecting the value of the book as denot- 
ing prevalent opinions, it is clearly not the work of a Christian 
Jew, as has been supposed.^ It contains no allusion whatever 
to the redemptive work of Christ ; and it has been well remarked : 
" The Christological portions do not possess sufiicient distinctness 
to imply a knowledge of the New Testament. The name Jesus 
never occurs ; though Son of Man, so often given to the Messiah 
in the Gospels, is very frequent. Neither are the appellations 
Lord, Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, or even Christ employed. Is 
there not something unaccountable here on the supposition that 
the writer was instructed in Christianity ? " ^ It has, then, no 
Christian authority. And, though evidently written by a Jew, 



1 Stuart and Liicke. 



2 Dr. Davidson, as above.. 



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 



219 



the time and place of its composition are matters of dispute. It 
is doubted whether it was written during the reign of Herod, or 
earlier ; but though alluded to in the " Testaments of the Twelve 
Patriarchs," about A. D. 100, and by several of the Fathers, it 
is not noticed by Philo or Josephus. It is doubted whether its 
author lived in the northern part of Palestine, in the northern 
districts of the Caspian and Euxine seas, in Chaldsea, in Egypt, 
or in Abyssinia ; whether it was written by one person, or com- 
piled fi'om various tracts ; whether it was quoted by Jude, or 
suggested by Jude's citation of a tradition from Enoch. And 
finally, if it were an index of Jewish opinions, it would indicate 
no less clearly the foreign origin of any opinion that could be of 
use in this discussion. One writer pronounces it the work of a 
Jew because " there is so much imitation of Daniel, such an 
exhibition of Jewish conceptions mixed with superstition, and 
occasionally with cabalistic theology or oriental theosophy." 
And, debating the place of its author, the same writer says : " It 
is true tlmt there are allusions to the Oriental theosophy and the 
opinions of Zoroaster which would appear to recommend a Chai- 
daean origin, at least of the astronomical part ; but the author's 
predilection for the images Jire, radiance, light, and other 
Oriental symbols, may be accounted for on some other supposi- 
tion than that of his residence in Chald^a. In what way he 
became acquainted with the Zend-Avesta, or the sentiments 
embodied in that book, we are not able to tell, although it is 
pretty obvious that various portions of his book are tinctured 
with the Oriental philosophy of Middle Asia." ^ 

2. From the hook of Judith, a single passage has been cited to 
prove Jewish opinions: "The Lord Almighty will take ven- 
geance on them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms 
in their flesh; they shall feel them, and weep for ever."^ We 
welcome this argument as a last resort to show that conscious 
misery is described in any book pretending to keep canonical 
company. Assuredly, if such a passage is to sustain the mo- 



1 Dr. Davidson, ibid. 2 ch. xvi. 17. See New Englander, May, 1856, p. 175 



220 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



raentous docti'ine, the character of the book and the best versions 
of it should share the burden. But the book is, perhaps, of less 
value than any other in the Jewish Apocrypha. It is not named 
by Philo or Josephus. Good critics differ by two centuries 
respecting its date ; one assigning it to B. C. 104, and another 
to about A. D. 100. It is not even a respectable fiction. " The 
difficulties, historical, chronological, and geographical, comprised 
in the narrative of Judith, are so numerous and serious as to be 
held by many divines altogether insuperable. Events, times, 
and manners are said to be confounded, and the chronology of 
the times before and those after the exile, of the Persian and 
Assyrian, and even of the Maccabsean period, confusedly and 
unaccountably blended." ^ 

But why should we disparage the book ? We wish, for the 
sake of our argument, that it were canonical ; that is, the book 
itself, and not the modern version of it. The conjecture of Ar- 
nald in his commentary, that the original Greek — for Hebrew 
there is none — K?iavGovTat (shall weep) has been mistaken for 
KavGovTai, is supported by the Vulgate of Jerome which reads urcm- 
tur (may be burned), by a still older Latin version ^ which reads 
comhurantur (may be burned up), and by the Syriac, which, it 
has been remarked, indicates the inferiority of the manuscripts 
now extant. The sense of the passage would then be : " that 
with pain (ty ahdT/aei) they may be consumed for ever." 

3. The doctrines of the Pharisees are cited to show that the 
Jews commonly held an immortality which Christ did not explic- 
itly deny.^ To this we reply : 

(1.) The influence of the Pharisees on the opinions of the 
common people was more apparent than real. It was indeed 
powerful, but it was so connected with the arts of imposture and 
fraud, that they often overreached themselves, and lost the 
popular regard. The very conception of Pharisaism was such 
as must expose its professors to frequent contempt, as they did 

1 Wm. Wright, Kitto's Cyclopaedia, art. Judith. 

2 See Sabatier, Bibliorum Sacrorum Lat. Versioiies Antiquse, 

3 New Knglander, 1856, p. 169; — J. T. Walsh, Future Punishment, Introd. 



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 



221 



suffer the severest denunciations of Christ. It began in the 
ambition of name and influence, which is sure to grasp the 
shadow and lose the substance. " They bear their chief charac- 
teristics," says one, " in their name, which, from a word denoting 
' to separate,' marks them out as the elite of Hebrew society, the 
men of note and distinction, whose motto, in the words of Horace, 
might have been : 

' Odi profanum vulgus, 
Et arceo 

or, in the accurately descriptive terms of Jesus, 'they trusted in 
themselves, and despised others' (Luke xviii. 9) ; men of whose 
character notice is found in the Bible as early as the days 
of Isaiah (Ixv. 5 ; Ixvi. 17). This, which was the fundamental 
quality of the Pharisees, and which, setting them forth as per- 
sons of extraordinary parts, superior intelligence, possessed of a 
higher knowledge, a lofty and satisfactory method of interpreting 
the sacred writings, a transcendental philosophy which, despis- 
ing common sense as a tame, vulgar thing, could solve all 
questions, and expound hitherto unknown truths, — made them 
* the observed of all observers,' the oracles of the day, the only 
true interpreters of Judaism." ^ " Like cunning priests and 
Jesuits," says another, "they prayed with forms and phrases, 
they seized a place in the hearts and consciences of men, cor- 
rupted them even by means of pious instruction, led them 
whither they would have them go, acquired many a fair prize, 
and became rulers of an earthly kingdom of darkness."^ Jose- 
phus, who was himself a Pharisee, says that they " were able to 
make great opposition to kings ; a cunning sect they were, and 
soon elevated to a pitch of open fighting and doing mischief." ^ 
And he gives instances of their frauds and pretended prophecies, 
practised to compass their designs. Now when we consider their 
oppressions and extortions, with the weak foundation of tradi- 
tions on which they rested their authority, and their fanciful 
methods of interpretation, we may suspect that the common 

1 J. R. Beard, People's Diet, of the Bible. 

2 Staiidlin, Sittenlehre, i. 431. s Antiq. 1. 17, c. 2, ^ 4 

19* 



222 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



people yielded a deference often feigned, and more in fear than 
in faith. May we not infer as much from the language of Jose- 
phus : "The Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, 
and have not the populace obsequious to them; but the Phari- 
sees have the multitude on their side"? — and of Mark, who says, 
in close connection with Christ's denunciation of the scribes: 
The common people heard him gladly " ? (xii. 37.) 
But we are not left to conjecture in what estimation the Phar- 
isees were held. The hatred of then?, was proverbial. They 
are thus censured by the Talmudists : " Among the plagues that 
come of the Pharisees, is this : A person conspires with orphans, 
to plunder the widow. When Rabbi Shabbatai had spoiled a 
certain widow of her goods, the orphans came to Rabbi Eleazei-, 
who said to them : Y/hat business with us ? you are foolish not 
to tell this to the scribe. So the Rabbi. But the scribe says : 
Pretend that you are going to sell your goods ; when the widow 
sees it, she will ask a stipend, and lose her living. They did so. 
In the evening that poor woman went to R. Eleazer, who said 
of her: The plague of the Pharisees has come upon her."^ 
Another proverb occurs in the same Jewish book : " A Pharisee 
woman, and the scraping of the Pharisees on the stones, ruin the 
world." The " scraping of the Pharisees " is an allusion to one 
of the seven sects into which the Talmud divides the Pharisees, 
the names of which will show that they were no more hated 
than contemned. These were, 1, the Sichemite Pharisee — cir- 
cumcised, but not in honor of God ; 2, the Scraping or Trun- 
cated Pharisee — who, that he might appear in profound medi- 
tation, as if destitute of feet, scarcely lifted them from the ground ; 
3, the Striking Pharisee — dashing his head against the wall, 
closing his eyes to avoid the sight of a woman ; 4, the Mortar 
Pharisee — burying his head in a deep bonnet, to avoid distrac- 
tion ; or, as some interpret, wearing a large and flowing robe ; 
5, the Boasting Pharisee, who says, What should I do that I 
have not done ; 6, the Pharisee of Fear — ■ obeying for the dread 
of punishment ; 7, the Pharisee of Love — moved by the hope 

1 Sota Hieros. fol. 20. 1 ; cited by Schoettgen, Horge Heb. et Taka. in Matt. 
^xiil. 14. 



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 



223 



of reward.^ Liglitfoot, remarking upon these sects, says that, 
granting the better sort of them came to John's baptism, the best 
of the Pharisees were the worst of men. And Calmet remark?, 
that this account shows them to have been deeply immersed in 
the idlest and most ridiculous superstitions. But this condem- 
nation of them was written only about two centuries after Christ's 
time, in a work that remains as the oracle of Jewish opinion. 

We conclude that the influence of the Pharisees was the com- 
mon influence of hierarchies. The reputation of expounders in 
orthodoxy was industriously kept up, and the empty name has 
continued. Those of the people who thought at all, thought for 
themselves. 

(2.) Christ himself denounced not only the practices, but the 
doctrine of the Pharisees. And the whole account of them in 
the New Testament shows that though they may have been 
learned or subtle, they were in no sense wise. John the Baptist 
hails them with the language of surprise : " O generation of 
vipers ! who hath taught you to flee from the wrath to come ? " 
And the scriptural catalogue of their vices has been fairly made 
out by a late writer^ in about fifteen charges, either of which 
miglit justify the exhortation of Christ to " Beware of the leaven 
of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.'' And when Christ 
enjoined respect for the scribes, as sitting in Moses' seat, the 
proof is wanting, either that the scribes were responsible for all 
the opinions of the Pharisees, or that if they were, the people 
were therefore to accept their theological opinions as correct. 
Nor do the instances in which Christ and Paul took sides with 
the Pharisees against the Sadducees show any farther sanction 
of their views than in these two points : the existence of spirits, 
and the resurrection of the dead. We need not be surprised, 
then, when we find that the reputation of the Pharisees among 
the Christians was no better than among their own people. By 
several of the Fathers they were reckoned as heretics ; for an- 

1 Talmxid Hieros. Beraclioth, f. 13, 2 ; et Sota, f. 20, 3 ; Babyl. Sota, f. 22, 2 ; 
cited by Liglitfoot on Matt. iii. 7. Compare Basnage, Hist, of Jews, b. 2. c. 11; 
and Robinson's Calmet. 

J. R. Beard, in Kitto's Cyclopaedia. 



224 



THE SCRIPTUPvAL ARGmiENT. 



Other error, indeed, viz : the denial of man's free will, in a 
Stoic doctrine of fate ; ^ yet the fact shows that the early Chris- 
tians never regarded them as of standard orthodoxy. 

(3.) The Pharisaic doctrine of immortality (which we here 
admit simply for argument's sake, resting as it does wholly on 
the testimony of Josephus, of whom hereafter) was evidently of 
foreign origin, of a philosophic cast, and, so to speak, un-Jewish. 
The account given by Josephus is in a nomenclature to which 
the Jews had been strangers, which is unknown to the Talmud, 
but with which the Greeks and Orientals were quite familiar. 
Something here may be allowed for the private opinions and 
trimming habits of Josephus ; but it has been observed that his 
statement of Pharisaic doctrine might be mistaken for that of 
transmigration ; and his dissuasive from suicide is quite Platonic : 
" The bodies of all men are corruptible, and are created out of 
corruptible matter ; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a por- 
tion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies."^ And the writer 
already cited, speaking of the Pharisees, says : " It is evident 
that the popular faith of the Jews had to a certain point adopted 
the dualism of the Parsees, which was made subordinate to the 
Mosaic monotheism." And again : " It would appear that Rab- 
binism was but an unfolding of Pharisaism, the full and swelling 
stream of corrupt doctrines, views, and practices, of which the 
rivulets run up to the days of Christ, and stretch back to those 
of Ezra, till they are lost in the fountain-head — the religious 
philosophy of a corrupt Zoroasterism." And he concludes : 
"It is to unite the hawk and the dove, to bring into one 
darkness and light, to expect figs from thistles, if we will persist 
in maintaining that Jesus and the Pharisees had any essential 
and peculiar features in common — we say essential and peculiar 
features, because such only are of any value in the argument ; 

1 " The Fathers have looked upon the Pharisees as heretics." — Basnage, Hist, 
of Jews, b. 2, c. 11. He refers to Serrarius, Trihaer. 1. 2, c. 9; — Voisin, Obs. 
in Proeniium Ptigionis Fidei; — Ficinus, Flagellum Judeeorum, 1. 9, c. 11. 

2 Wars of the Jews, b. 3, c. 8, § 5. See the article in Kitto, and reference, at 
the end. 



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 



225 



since even the Pharisees, as men and monotheists, doubtless had 
some good traits, and possessed some scattered rays of truth." ^ 

III. But for still another reason Christ did not sanction the 
doctrine in question by his silence respecting it. It was not his 
custom to oppose particular errors by explicit mention and con- 
demnation. For the method of the Great Teacher was : 1. To 
inculcate general principles, rather than special precepts. Of 
this the Sermon on the Mount is an example, as also his teaching 
by parables which were sometimes explained, not to the public 
ear, but to the disciples alone. And there are abundant proofs 
of this, in the variant applications that have been made of the 
principles which Christ has laid down. 2. He taught by affirma- 
tion, rather than denial. The Gospel was not a negation, but a 
Revelation. He came "not to destroy, but to fulfil," in this 
sense also, — that he removed errors not by the special refuta- 
tion and demolition of them, but by offering truth in their stead. 
And the children of wisdom have ever done this. The success- 
ful reformer has ever labored first and most to proclaim some 
great truth of which his heart was full. Thus have deep-seated 
evils been best removed. In this respect Christ and the Apos- 
tles were model reformers. Christ undermined the foundations 
of the kingdom of Might, which had imposed an oppressive 
tyranny upon the Jews, by asserting another principle, and a 
higher law. He told of a kingdom of Truth, and bade men 
" render to Cgesar the things that are Ceesar's — and to God the 
things that are God's." And Paul struck at the root of a prev- 
alent system of slavery, by saying : " Masters, give unto your 
servants that which is just and equal ; knowing that ye also have 
a Master in heaven." But the same argument now offered to 
show that Christ recognized man's proper immortality, might be 
offered, and is employed, to show that tyranny and oppression 
are right. And, 3. Christ dealt not with the theories of men, 
but with their conduct. He was a practical teacher. He rarely, 

i J. E. Beard, Kitto's Cyclopedia, art. Pharisees. Eemarkiog that "some 
of the extracts from Josephus show clearly that the Greek philosophy had an 
influence on the doctrines of the Pharisees," Mr. B. refers to Tholuck, Comm. 
de vi quam Graeca Philosophia in Theologiam turn I\Iuhammedor. tum Judceor, 
exercuit. Hanib. 1835-7. See also ^yerde^nann, Theodicee, III. 74, 75. 



226 



THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT. 



if ever, spoke of what we should call doctrinal errors. Ana 
when he uttered his warning against the "doctrine" of the 
Pharisees and Sadducees, he did not mean their false systems 
of philosophy, but their bad instructions. The pernicious leaven 
was the making void the law of God by the traditions of men, 
and the thousand other corruptions and perversions by which 
they sought to do away the weighty duties of justice, mercy, and 
truth. The rational forms of doctrine are important in their 
place ; but Christ never gave them the prominence they hold in 
that doctrinalism which is itself a perversion. The " sound doc- 
trine " which he taught was the healthy instruction (iidaaKokLa 
vyiaivovcra, Tit. i. 9) of the Great Physician, come to recover men 
from death, and teach them in the v/ays of life. 

Through the grave did Christ " show the path of life." The 
effect of his doctrine of life upon the early language of the Chris- 
tians, before it was corrupted by the mixture of foreign views, 
will appear w^hen we come to the history of their time. The 
immediate effect of his teaching is remarkably apparent in the 
earliest and most valued version of the "Word of Life, — the 
Syriac, in which the very names of the Savior and of his saving 
work are the " Life-Giver," and the " giving of life." We may 
conclude this argument with a few examples, taken almost at 
random from Dr. Murdock's translation. " I did not come to 
judge the world, but to vivify the world " (John xii. 47). 
" Believe on the name of our Lord Jesus Messiah, and thou wilt 
have life" (Acts xvi. 31). "It is for your consolation and for 
your life that we are afflicted" (2 Cor. i. 6). "Our concern is 
from heaven ; and from thence we expect our Vivifier, our Lord 
Jesus Messiah" (Phil. iii. 20). God hath not appointed us to 
wrath, but to the acquisition of life" (1 Thes. v. 9). "Jesus 
the Messiah came into the world to give life to sinners" (1 Tim. 
i. 15). "And he is able to vivify for ever them who come to 
God by him" (Heb. vii. 25). "There is one Lawgiver and 
Judge, who can make alive, and can destroy" (James iv. 12). 
" That ye may receive the recompense of your faith, the life of 
your souls" (1 Pet. i. 9). "Grace and peace from God our 
Father, and from our Lord Jesus the Messiah our Life-giver " 
(Tit. i. 4). 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 
" The truth sooner emerges from error than from confusion." — Bacon. 
§ 1. THE METAPHYSICAL ARGUMENT. 

The attempt to prove the soul immortal from its very nature 
is supposed to be so generally abandoned as worthy only of the 
Schoolmen, that an examination of it in any form may seem 
gratuitous or invidious. We shall examine it, nevertheless, for 
three reasons : 1st, because the subtlety of this argument often 
attracts the most acute minds ; 2dly, because its traditional force 
in the community is not yet spent ; 3dly, a fair view of the 
subject may correct the errors produced by reaction. 

Augustine, shortly before his conversion to Christianity, wrote 
a book of sixteen reasons for the proper immortality of the soul. 
Among them are the following : The soul is a subject of knowl- 
edge, which is ever the same ; and of reason, which changes not. 
As from body can not be taken away that by which it is body, 
so neither from mind that by which it is mind. The soul is life ; 
hence it can not want life. No essence is contrary to the truth, 
whereby the mind is what it is. 

We are not surprised that in his " Eetractations " the more 
sober and practical Augustine should speak of this book as 
obscure and perplexed, so that he himself could scarcely com- 
prehend it ; but we are surprised that he did not wholly abandon 
and condemn the entire argument. We can explain this fact 
only by adverting to the original arguments which still pleased 
many converted philosophers as much as they had been admired 
by Cicero. Here is one of them, from the Phsedo : " Does the 
soul always bring life to whatever it occupies ? Indeed it does. 



228 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



Is there, now, any thing contrary to Ufe, or not ? There is, — 
death. But the soul will never admit the contrary of that which 
it brings with it, as has already been allowed. Most assuredly. 
Be it so ; but what do we call that which does not admit death ? 
Immortal." The argument is as good as if one should say a 
given wheel will ever exist because it is essentially round. It 
is the nature of a thing to be what it is. And so things are 
eternized by their definitions. 

We may excuse such puerilities because they were indulged 
beyond the dark ages, on which, perhaps, they throw some light. 
But what shall we say if we find the old sophism, — that, since 
motion must be either where a thing is or where it is not, there- 
fore nothing can move, — revamped on our side of the dark 
ages to show that the soul can not die ? Yet this is done, in a 
book lately very famous, thus : " The power which is supposed 
to reduce the soul to a point of annihilation, must either exist in 
this given point, or it must not ; if it exist, we have not yet 
arrived at that point which describes a nonentity ; and where 
nonentity is not, annihilation can never be. And if it exist in 
this point, the soul can never be annihilated by its influence ; 
and in either case the soul is immortal." Again we are told : 
" If the soul be annihilated, it must be either by something which 
is in existence, or by something which is not. But that which 
is in existence can never produce what is physically contrary to 
itself, and that which has no existence can never act." So there 
can be, perhaps, no physical pain. And again : " That which 
produces a nonentity is not power, but nothing."^ Wherefore 
the Creator should take heed not to reduce an atom to nonentity, 
lest He should prove himself to be nothing. 

Descending from these m.etaphysic clouds, we meet the more 
common argument from the uncompounded nature of the soul. 
It is a simple substance, not subject to disintegration, indivisible. 
This hope of an after life is as old as Socrates and Cicero, who 
should be welcome to it in so far it gave them comfort. Later 
criticism makes ' ' appeal to the most obstinate dogmatist, whether 

1 Samuel Drew, On the Soul, Part II. c. 1, § 6; cited as arguments worthy 
of consideration by Luther Lee, On the Soul, c. 2, § 1. 



THE METAPHYSICAL ARGUMENT. 



229 



the proof of the cont inued existence of the soul after death derived 
from the simplicity of its substance . . . has ever been able 
to pass beyond the limits of the schools, to penetrate the public 
mind, or to exercise the slightest influence on its convictions."^ 
With a brighter light to illuminate the unseen world, we can 
afford to recognize that this argument would also prove the atom 
indestructible, and creation, as well as un-creation, impossible. 

Not only is the argument worthless ; the fact of the soul's un- 
compounded nature is not proven, perhaps cannot be. Immaterial 
substance may be organic, according to some law of spiritual being. 
All analogies look that way. The endlessly varied operations of 
the mind show a structure marvellously complex. If it be a homo- 
geneous substance, its constitution is wonderfully intricate. If 
without parts, it is exquisitively framed in the harmony of its 
faculties. Though it can not be weighed by ounces or measured 
by inches, it may yet be really greater or less in its quantity of 
being ; how else, regarding the soul as a pure entelechy, shall we 
avoid the common notion that all souls are originally alike, of equal 
capacity and power ? How shall we explain the different tempers 
or the acquired habits of human mind ? Are v/e sure men's natures 
do not modify their very being ? If the soul can not be disinte- 
grated, it may be deranged ; and while this derangement lies deeper 
than our anatomy or chemistry, it may be no less a symptom of 
decay, a prelude of final dissolution. Without annihilation of sub- 
stance the soul may perish from being. There may be immaterial 
substance unwrought into personal or individual being. 

Our theory of the soul's nature will of course affect our view 
of its origin. Is it given to the body by an immediate creation, 
or by delegated power ? Is the human species reproductive of 
its kind, no less than the brute? Is not the dignity of man's 
nature concerned here ? ^ 

1 Kant, Pure Eeason, Pref. p. xxxvi. Meiklejohn's trans. 

2 The Traducian theory of the soul's origin is now respectable. It is elo- 
quently asserted by R. &. Storrs, Constitution of the Soul, pp. 47-56. Compare 
Prof. Chace, Bib. Sacra, Nov, 1848, pp. 648, 649 ; — Nevin, Mystical Presence, 
pp. 164, 165 ; — and medical writers generally, not the materialist or skeptical 
alone. 



230 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



We have partly anticipated tlie argument from the immaterial 
nature of the soul. The fact we readily admit, but granting 
even that spiritual substance is uncompounded and cannot be 
dissolved, it may yet be annihilated by the same poAver that 
created it. And we have already seen how the argument proves 
too much, so that, to save the dishonor of too much company in 
our immortality, some would have us call the brute soul imper- 
ishable but not immortal. Some men of large heart allow the 
conclusion to which the argument leads, and welcome all living 
creatures to immortal life.^ Bishop Butler accepts the inference, 
meeting the prejudice that may threaten our dignity with the 
remark that " the natural immortality of brutes does not in the 
least imply that they are endowed with any latent capacities of a 
rational or moral nature."^ It is better to waive the entire 
argument, with a careful writer, who says : '' As to the pretended 
demonstration of immortality drawn from the assumed sim- 
plicity and indestructibility of the soul as an immaterial substance, 
they appear altogether unconclusive ; or, if conclusive, then such 
as must be admitted to apply, with scarcely diminished force, to 
all sentient orders ; and it must be granted that whatever has 
felt and acted spontaneously must live again and forever."^ 

It is here worthy of notice that in the New Testament a dis-. 
tinction is sometimes made between the regenerate and the 
unregenerate, as if the former possessed soul and spirit, and the 
latter, soul only. Thus Jude speaks of a certain class of men as 
psychical (Tpyx^noi, soulish), not having spirit (jrvevjia, ver. 19), 
Christ speaks of that which is born of the flesh as flesh, and that 
which is born of the spirit as spirit (John iii. 6). Paul calls the 

1 Duns Scotus, (see Leibnitz, Th^odic^e, Part I. § 89); Chev. Ramsay, Nat. 
and Eev. Eel. b. 5, a doctrine of metempsychosis; — R. Dean, Essay on the 

" Futm-e Life of the Brute Creatures (Lend. 1768); — J. Wesley, Serm. on Rom. 
viii. 19-22; — A. Clarke, Comm. on Rom. ch. viii; — Tennyson, In Memo- 
riam. liii, liv. ; — T. Parker, Theism, p. 187: — Agassiz, Nat. Hist, of the U. S., 
I. 64-66. 

2 Analogy, Part I. c. 2. 

3 L Taylor, Physical Theory, c. 17. The argument from tl»e soul's imma- 
teriality is declined by Werdermann, Theodicee L 16; — Secretan, Phil, de la 
Libert^, LcQon 31 ; — Knapp, Chr. Theol. § 51 ; — Chalmers, Inst, of Theol. b. 2, 
c. 3; — T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 



231 



present body psychical (ipvxtKov'^^ and the immortal body spiritual 
(TTvevfinnKov, 1 Cor. XV. 44, 46). And writing to the Thessalo- 
nians he desires that their " whole spirit and soul and body may 
be preserved blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ " 
(1 Thes. V. 23). 

In these and other passages the term " spirit" seems to denote 
more than temper or disposition. It is as if something, either 
substance or quality, were added to the being of those who are 
born of God, so that they are said to be born of an incorruptible 
seed (1 Pet. i. 23 ; 1 John iii. 9 ) and to be "made partakers of 
the divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4), while others are compared to 
irrational animals that shall utterly perish in their own corrup- 
tion (2 Pet. ii. 12). Speculate as we may about the nature of 
this difference, we need not be surprised to find that the early 
Christians made much account of it in their hope of immortality. 
And Irenseus goes so far as to say that by the spirit the man 
becomes spiritual and complete ; without this the soul and body 
are an incomplete man; such persons are called "flesh and 
blood," and it is said of them, " let the dead bury their dead," 
because they have not the spirit which vivifies the man ; — 
but those vdio have this are "justly called men, pure, spiritual, 
living unto God."^ This distinction is recognized but misapplied 
by modern philosophers, who say that man differs from the 
brute in having a spirit in addition to soul and body, and who 
assume that all men have spirit and are immortal.^ 

§ 2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 

Of this there are two forms : 1st, that founded on the concep- 
tions of the pure reason and the elements of human personality ; 
2d, that derived from the manifold operations of the under- 
standing. 

1. By the conceptions of pure reason we mean the ideas of 
time and space, the finite and the infinite, the beautiful, the true 
and the good, the right and the wrong, and other categories or 



1 Contra Hasres. 1. 5, cc. 6-9. 2 Thus Schubert, Geschiclite der Secle. 



232 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



primary modes of thought. Since these are of the soul's very 
nature and constitution, the argument from them is analogous to 
the higher metaphysical. It may be stated thus : How can the 
finite soul conceive of the infinite, the absolute, or the universal, 
unless it be itself of their nature, — a concrete personal expres- 
sion of them, resembling their changeless permanence in its own 
immortality? Plato regards these ideas or primal forms and 
archetypes as real things, and proposes the aro;ument thus : 
^' There is a certain abstract beauty and goodness and magni- 
tude ; and so of all other things ; which if you grant me, and 
allow that they do exist, I hope that I shall be able from these to 
explain the cause to you, and to discover that the soul is immor- 
tal."^ It is stated by a late writer thus : "The understanding 
in man is dilferenced from the corresponding power in the brute, 
by its union with the spiritual, the supernatural, the universal 
reason. ... It has behind it, as it were, as that in which 
it is grounded, and from which it receives the inward life of its 
life, and which constitutes its true and very being, — the univer- 
sal life and reason. . . . You would say that it (the principle 
of personality) is essentially immortal ; or that the form of intel- 
ligence and will which constitutes the proper being of humanity 
in each individual, is so pre-conformed to, and so partakes of, 
the universal and spiritual, as to be, in its own right, placed in 
antithesis to the ever becoming and continually evanescent 
phainomena of nature, and to have a principle that is abiding 
and one with itself."^ 

The last expression is so suggestive of the language of Scrip- 
ture respecting " those things that are shaken, as things that are 
made, that those things which can not be shaken may remain," 
and respecting the spiritual as that " which liveth and abidetli 
for ever," that we are surprised when so devout a writer says of 
the opinion that the soul becomes immortal by regeneration, " it 

1 Phffido, p. 100. 

2 Dr. Marsh, Memoir and Remains, pp. 391-397. Compare, for a special use 
of the argument, Spinoza, Ethices Pars V. prop. 29 : " De natura rationis est, 
res sub specie ^ternitatis concipere;" prop. 40: " Pars mentis geterna est intel- 
lectus." 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 



233 



seems to me that this contradicts phiIoso]:)hy no less than reve- 
lation." We were prepared rather to hear what the Platonists 
and the Fathers have finely said, that " God is the life of the 
soul, as the soul is the life of the body," with the natural infer- 
ence that when the soul forsakes God, its very life is forfeit.^ 
Disappointed of this, we must remark that the argument just as 
much proves the soul's absolute eternity as its indefeasible 
immortality. And if it proves the spiritual nature of the unre- 
generate, it may be made to involve the immortality of brutes. 
For the instinct of the brute soul is an action not only according 
to the proper nature of the brute, but often according to higher 
laws, as absolute and eternal as any of the ideas conceived by 
the rational soul. The bee constructs its cell according to the 
very same principles of isoperimetry and of the strength of 
materials which the severe studies of a Euclid and a Newton 
have demonstrated. And we may not contemptuously say that 
the instinct of the brute is without thought ; it outstrips thought, 
and may be better, as intuition is better than discursive reason- 
ing. The most profound insight of man is often unable to jus- 
tify itself by a reason — unconscious — inspired. Instinct is a 
species of inspiration ; if not from God, yet from the laws v/hich 
He regards ; which pervade, if they do not constitute, the very 
being of the brute instinct, — " the life of its life." The brute 
differs most from man in the defect of free will ; which is not a' 
defect compared with man's abuse of it, nor half so good a reason 
why a creature should die. 

We think it better therefore to leave this argument, which is 
obviously somewhat Gnostic, to the ancients who may have 
needed it while the actual life of man furnished the most slender 
material for the more valid argument from the right use of the 
" ideas." The argument from man's personality is thus relin- 
qi;is;hed by Dr. Miiller, in a review of the doctrine we hold : 
" By the mere analysis of the conception of personality is the 

1 " Vita animae Deus est; hajc corporis. Hac fugiente, 
Solvitur hoc; perit lijec, destituente Deo." 
Cited witli several like expressions by Hamilton, Discussions iu Philosophy 
and Literature, p. 27, note. 

£0* 



234 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



conviction of the immortality of the personal being not to be 
gained. But if these efforts of philosophy must remain gratui- 
tous, it may nevertheless, in so far as it builds itself up on the 
principles assumed in Christianity, attain to an ever more full 
and clear knowledge of the great and real connection of the 
world, in which the immortality of the personal Creator has its 
fixed place ; wherewith the conviction of this [human] immor- 
tality also gains an ever increasing philosophic evidence." 
Upon which it is v/ell remarked : " In these words is expressed 
in the most striking manner the difference between a truly phil- 
osophic doctrine of immortality, which must be also the truly 
Christian, and the rationalist doctrine now current among the 
great multitude of those who call them?elves thinkers." ^ 

2. The argument from the manifoldness of human thought, 
or from man's boundless capacity of knowledge, is worthless 
unless we assume that knowledge is the highest good. If it be 
a means to an end, then the marvellous capacities of human 
intellect are indeed a weighty argument for a high end and des- 
tiny whenever they are employed aright. But if they are 
abused, perverted, squandered, their loss in the loss of being 
may be a just retribution. " Though one speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and understand all mysteries and 
all knowledge, and have not love, he is nothing." Intellect is 
to virtue what form is to substance ; and the empty form of 
humanity, however splendid, is worthless to itself and to the 
world. "Will God's commonwealth be made less rich by the 
perishing of a glittering casket that yields no jewel ? 

§ 3. THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 

This is of two kinds : 1st, that from man's capacity and desire 
of eternal happiness ; 2d, that from his aspirations for virtue, or 
for being worthy of eternal happiness. 

1. A mere wish for happiness may be disappointed. The 

1 C. H. Weisse, (whose argument was the subject of Miiller's review,) On the 
Philosophic Significance of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things; Studien 
und Kritiken, 1836, No. II. p. 272. 



THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 



235 



world is full of ungratified desires and blasted hopes. Few gain 
the pleasures, the wealth, or the honors which thej seek. Here 
all is vanity and empty effort. Will it be said that God often 
disappoints the earthly hope that He may quicken and gratify a 
heavenly ? Doubtless ; but this is a divine gratuity, not a 
human right ; the special grace proves no general law. And 
multitudes seem to desire an endless pleasure with no thought 
of any thing better than pleasure ; they love it even more than 
they love God, for no better reason than the brute dreads pain 
and hungers for enjoyment. The desire may be more refined 
than that of the dumb animal ; yet it is only aesthetic, never 
moral ; and its grasp after infinity may have swallowed up the 
other capacities of the soul into its monstrous disproportion. It 
is the old prayer : " Let me die the death of the righteous," 
offered by one who scorned the just conditions of felicity. It is 
the lust, or inordinate desire, which is forbidden in the last pre- 
cept of the Decalogue because it tempts to the infraction of 
every other precept ; which we are told has brought corruption 
into the world ; which brings forth sin, the mother of death. 

2. That which is indeed the moral argument for an after life 
is thus stated by John Howe : " Nothing can be more uncon- 
ceivable than that the great Creator and Author of all things 
should frame a creature of so vast a comprehension as the spirit 
of man, put into it a capacity of knowing and conversing with 
Himself, give it some prospect of His own glory and blessedness, 
raise thereby, in many, boundless unsatisfied desires after Him, 
and inexpressible pleasure in the preconceived hope of being 
received into the communion of that glory and blessedness, — 
and yet defeat and blast so great an expectation by the unsus- 
pected reducement of the very subject of it again to nothing."^ 

1 Blessedness of the Eighteous, c. 1; — Compare LructaBtius, Instt. Div. 1. 7, 
c. 10: "Ipsa ergo virtutis pei'petaitas indicat hnmaniTm anim-um, si virtutem 
ceperit, permanere; quia et virtus perpetua est, et solus animus humanus virtu- 
tem capit;" — Aquinas, Summa Philos. 1. 2. c. 79; — J. Scott, Christian Life, 
Part II. c. 5, § 2 : " Virtue and the hopes of immortality are so nearly allied, 
that, like Hippocrates' twins, they live and die together;" — Edwards, Works, 
I. 581 : " The righteous, who . . . shall have life as the great fruit of His favor 
and blessuig, %vill have a Ufe, or duration, that shall be long, answerably to their 



236 



TPIE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



This argument we deem valid because we can not conceive 
of God as kindling most noble desires that shall be unfed, and 
shall prey upon the soul to consume it. For all lawless and 
morbid cravings man is responsible; but the aspiration after 
virtue and holiness is God's foster child, which He can not leave 
to perish. As He is faithful and true, He will not frustrate the 
hopes which He has inspired. He will not tantalize the desires 
which, by the law of our moral being, by an approving con- 
science, and by the displays of His own goodness and glory. He 
has encouraged. Here the scriptural statement may be taken 
as the promise of man's best and truest nature : " To those who 
by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor 
and immortality, — eternal life." 

But upon the very face of it this argument only proves the 
immortality of the good. Because it turns on moral character, 
and not on a physical nature of things, it even demands a divine 
power to immortalize the good and not the bad. Here we may 
note the confounding of things that differ — more disastrous to 
the truth than unmixed error — when the virtues of good men 
are supposed to prove an immortal life of all men. That the 
bad have no endless being as a demand of justice for their eter- 
nal punishment, we think has been already shown. 

Here we meet a very important question, — Is immortahty 
necessary to the love and pursuit of virtue ? And some have 
seemed to suppose that duty and morality would be scarcely 
binding or possible without immortality.-^ Is endless being the 
debt, or the reward, of virtue ? If not, the argument has still to 
be cleared of matter that may perplex and destroy it. Let us 

nature, desires, etc.;" — Chalmers, Nat. Tlieol. b. 4, c. 6, §§17, 18; Bridge- 
water Treatise, Part I. c. 10; — I. Taylor, Physical Theory, c. 12, a beautiful 
and suggestive argument from analogy; — J. B. Walker, Sacred Philosophy, p. 
145: "As God does not disappoint the instinct where it has been operative in 
the lowest of his creatures, but crowns the pi'eparation with fruition in a 
higher life, can we suppose that a constitutional conviction, producing a like 
preparation in good men^ will not terminate in like manner?" — T. il. Post, Bib. 
Repos. July, 1844. 

1 Such is perhaps Jacobi's argument in his "Beweisvon UnsterbHclikeit vom 
Begi-iff der Pflichfc." See also Bceck and Haufif, cited by Storr and Flatt, 
Theology, § 18. 



THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT. 



237 



say, then, God could have made a moral being for a hundred 
years of duty and gladness, dreaming of nothing beyond, to die 
in a glorious sunset of gratitude. Now that an endless scope 
of virtue and joy is opened before men, his claim must rest 
wholly upon God's fidelity, not upon the merit or the necessities 
of virtue. True it is, that if the good man who loses this life for 
Christ's sake have no hope beyond it, he is " most miserable," 
unless virtue is its own reward. " I know not," says one of the 
ancients, " how I can account them blessed, that, having never 
enjoyed any good as the reward of their virtue, have even per- 
ished for virtue itself." Yet the self-sacrificing believer is said 
to receive an "hundred fold" even in this life; and if his losses 
were not made up here, in the peace which God gives, his 
deficit could be settled short of eternity. 

The argument thus far shows that eternal life is a gratuity, not 
a debt. Yet it is bestowed on virtue with the utmo&t propriety 
because virtue is the highest good, and nothing else can compete 
with it for such an honor. It is just that which ought to endure 
for ever. And while the virtuous man can neither demand nor 
desire endless delight as a reward, he must wish for a boundless 
scope. He loves not virtue that he may be immortal, but immor- 
tality that he may be ever virtuous, bearing the likeness of the 
Eternal. 

§ 4. THE ANALOGICAL ARGU3IENT. 

Analogy is a resemblance, not of things, but of relations. The 
foot of a mountain is not like the foot of an animal ; nor the end 
of a street like the end of a day ; nor the subversion of a city 
like the subversion of a scheme or a plan ; yet the similar rela- 
tion in each case suggests the use of the same term. Nearly all 
tropes and metaphors are founded upon such analogies. 

In reply, therefore, to the trite saying that all analogy is 
against the annihilation of the soul, since all apparent destruction 
in nature is only a change of form, — there are several things to 
be said. 1st, the apparent annihilation of the brute soul fur- 

1 Dionysius of Halicamassus, Antiq. Eom. 1. 8, c. 62, cited by Howe, as above. 



238 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



nislies no analogy because it is a similar case. 2dlv, until the 
simplex or uncompounded nature of the soul is proven past all 
doubt, we may suppose it to be destroyed by derangement and 
dissolution, odly, granting that it can be destroyed only by anni- 
hilation, then every case of a thing destroyed by derangement or 
disintegration is strictl}'- analogous. Not to insist upon the fact 
that the terms " destruction" and " annihilation" are often used 
interchangeably, things are variously destroj^ed, or put an end 
to, according to their natures. The methods of destruction are 
manifold ; the practical result is the same ; the thing destroyed 
is no longer what it was, but, as such a ching, has ceased to be. 
And in relation to this result every mode of destruction is anal- 
ogous to every other mode. 

But the argument from analogy reaches farther than the 
meaning of words. All things are in fact destroyed, that have 
either accomplished a temporary purpose, or have failed of their 
proper design. A large part of the visible world is thus decay- 
ing. Many things exist only to be consumed, and are of use 
only as they perish. Many things are worn away by use and are 
gone. Many things are abortive and come to nought. Thus 
the fashion of the world passeth away. 

Among living things we find striking analogies for the immor- 
tality of a class of the human species. The vegetable and 
animal world teems with the germs of life, of which a part only 
are matured. Every individual acorn is adapted to produce a 
mighty oak ; yet most acorns are consumed as food ; many 
decay as they fall ; a few find root and germinate ; these are 
decimated in their turn, and a few only grow up to be the strength 
and glory of their species. And the same law holds good in all 
kinds both of vegetable and animal life, the difference being 
only in the ratio of the whole number of germs to those that are 
matured, and in the stage of progress at which the decimation and 
destruction takes place. 

But if we were to judge of the destiny of the acorn by its 
adaptations, we should say that the creative purpose will be 
frustrated, and the earth defrauded, if it does not become an oak. 
If we count the myriads that perish, we should say that God 



THE ANALOGICAL ARGUJIENT. 



239 



had overdone his work, and his skill and power are wasted. 
We must qualify the common remark that nothing is created in 
vain. What has been called the law of the divine parsimony- 
seems to be overruled by a higher law of the divine bounty. 
The seeds of varied life are sown broadcast, by winds and waves 
and all moving things, so that no place may lack in whatever it 
can produce. The lavish abundance ensures the munificent 
designs of God, and therefore is not in vain. 

Now in Christ's parable of the Sower (Matt. xiii. 3-23) 
this analogy is applied to the destinies of the human species. 
The seeds that fall by the wayside, or in stony places, or among 
thorns, are made to illustrate the end of various classes of men. 
Those who fail of eternal life may seem to have been created in 
vain ; but the purpose of the race is accomplished in those who 
bring the fruit of the divine word to maturity. And here we find 
ourselves confronted with what may be called the cosmical argu- 
ment for the immortality of the good alone ; i. e. the argument 
from the economy of the world, which the ablest of the School- 
men has unwittingly expressed thus : " Nothing forbids that a 
portion, either of angels or of men, should perish for ever; 
because the purpose of the divine mind is accomplished in those 
who are saved." ^ 

But here we meet the objection that the soul of man is of 
special worth and may warrant an exception to the general 
rule ; that all should be saved. We reply, a true analogy would 
make the probation of mankind not an exception to the rule, but 
the highest example of it. The law of selection in the case of 
man is different ; the end is the same. The vegetable lifeling is 
the sport of chance. The animal, with its spontaneity, can help 
and provide for itself ; subject, however, to many dangers which 
it can not avert, and to man's dominion. Man, by his free will, 
is elevated to a higher rank, — beyond the reach of fate, but not 
of hazard. Indeed, the nations of men that have not heard the 
Word of Life are scarcely beyond the reach of fate, though 
strictly, as moral beings, they are salvable, and perish tlii'ough 



1 Aquinas, Summa, Pars III. Suppl. q. 99, prop. 2. 



240 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



unbelief in Him who is "not far from every one of them." 
Those who dwell in Christendom stand higher than they, and 
may fall farther. Yet the design of the species is accomplished 
in those who are perfected, and who shall never perish, because 
moral perfectness is an end in itself, and when attained, may be 
ever maintained. Man, as a race, is still subject to the sifting 
analogies that underlie him. As free, he is called upon to 
choose for himself, to make his calling and election sure, to 
acquit himself as a man. Failing of this, he is rejected, or rep- 
robate, as refuse and worthless. He is likened to tares, to the 
useless produce of the fisher's net, to the field of briers and 
thorns, whose end is to be burned. Condemned as morally 
unworthy, his reprobation has a higher ethical significance', while 
its literal import remains. 

And what we have just said of the sifting of the human race 
suggests some considerations respecting the differences in men's 
privileges and opportunities, and the great difficulties and hard- 
ships through which many must escape death and attain life. 
If man is created absolutely immortal, subject to the alterna- 
tive of eternal happiness or eternal misery, he seems to have 
hardly a fair trial here ; we should suppose that instead of being 
exposed to any dangerous temptations, the Heavenly Father 
would have furnished every motive to virtue, and would have 
allowed no motive to sin ; and we need not wonder if such fair 
trial for so fearful an alternative is sought in some preexistent 
state. But if we suppose that man is put on probation, not to 
escape an infinite evil, but to attain an infinite good, then the 
difficulties that beset his course are justified at once ; the greatest 
variety of conditions among men, encouraging or disheartening 
them in striving for a most glorious prize,- do not at all impugn 
God's justice, or denote any departure from the principles of 
honor and right ; they only mark the distinctions of divine grace. 
And then all analogy confirms the notion of such an ordeal, 
since every form of life and growth is a struggle with difficulties, 
— a war against opposing obstacles. All true life is activity, 
and activity is effort ; it is only in keeping with the scheme of 
the created world, that the highest blessing should be offered on 



THE ANALOGICAL ARGUMENT. 



241 



condition of the highest activity, — the ^'orking out of one's own 
salvation with fear and trembling, with the contingency of an 
eternal loss of the offered boon in a proper death. 

But a just analogy will sustain not only the fact of a condi- 
tional immortality, and the justice of it, but perhaps also a 
philosophy of it. Here we must distinguish between the rational 
argument and the rationalistic. The latter seeks proof of an 
after life in a nature of things, and will only accept a known 
law, which must be either a physical law, or something equiva- 
lent. Hence analogies which are not resemblances will not sat- 
isfy it. It can not accept a reason for immortality in lieu of a 
cause of immortality. But the truly rational argument can do 
this, in a just faith that the reason and the cause are somehow 
in God's providence connected. And the analogies support the 
faith. As in the animal creation every instinctive impulse to 
furnish a home, or to provide for a future stage of life, is attend- 
ed with a corresponding constitutional faculty, so the moral 
sentiment of an after life may, by the law of Christian faith, 
take hold upon the very essence of the future life. The trans- 
formation of insects not only gives an argument for the resur- 
rection, but the exceptions from the rule support the notion of 
differences in the nature 'and results of the resurrection in fne 
human species. An injury inflicted on the chrysalis produces a 
defect in the future fly ; and in many species the greater num- 
ber of nymphae utterly perish in their own pupj3e. So an injury 
done to the moral constitution may render the future life an 
abortion. The drone bee labors not, passes the summer in 
idle pleasure, and ought not to hibernate. How shall the 
"ought" be made fact? The instinct of the tribe destroys the 
drone. So the stronger and more enterprising nations of men 
supplant the weaker and idler ; and wisdom and virtue are ever 
mightier than brute force. And though we can not discover in 
all these cases by what connecting links the result is brought 
about, yet the analogy is here and in a hundred other cases 
complete, indicating that each human soul may live as long and 
no longer than it should. May we not, then, take the words of 
the Jewish Platonist in their strict sense, when he explains the 
21 



242 



THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT. 



" tree of life " as signifying " piety, the greatest of the virtues, 
by which the soul is rendered immortal " ? ^ 

It may here be asked whether the soul is naturally mortal or 
immortal? If nature be absolutely distinguished from three 
other things, — miracle, judgment, and grace, it may be difficult 
to answer the question. "We may safely say that as man was 
created for immortality, so that his endless life should come 
about in the proper course of things, it was as natural as it was 
proper ; and death may be regarded as unnatural, because judg- 
ment overrules nature. Yet if the forfeited boon is recovered 
both by special power and as a special favor, we ought not so to 
speak of man as naturally immortal as to overlook the important 
fact of the Redemption, and it will be better to say that man was 
made for immortality ; or, with the early Christians, that his 
nature is intermediate ; or, better still, that he is immortal by 
grace. 

1 PhUo, De Mundi Opificio, 0pp. 1. 37 (a) 35). 



CHAPTER VIL 



SOUL AND BODY. 

" Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon ; that mortality 
might be swallowed up of life." 

§ 1. MATTER AND MIND. 

The prevalence of a materialist philosophy which has fre- 
quently attended the doctrine we maintain, and which may be 
an extreme reaction from the notion that immateriality proves 
immortality, leads us to inquire what is the real distinction 
between matter and spirit. Here are involved mysteries of 
existence, and of time and space, which human reason may not 
be able to solve, but which may be an appointed discipline of 
our faculties, and which may show that materialism can not 
explain itself. 

Can any thing act where it does not exist ? It is probable 
that each particle of matter attracts, and thus acts upon, every 
other atom in the universe. For though the measure of attrac- 
tion, decreasing in the ratio of the square of the distance, 
may become indefinitely small, it can never vanish in nothing- 
ness. And we can not well explain attraction by the undulations 
of an ether diffused throughout space ; for such an ether must at 
every point of space, receive its impulse in as many varying 
directions or degrees from every existing atom. And if we 
suppose that the atom acts without such an ether, and acts only 
v/here it is present, it follows that each atom is omnipresent. 
That which has been said, and we think truly, of the Infinite 
Spirit, is in part true of every monad that He has created, — its 
centre is somewhere, but its circumference is nowhere ! 

And to this astounding conclusion the modern and prevailing 



244 



SOUL AND BODY. 



dynamic theory of matter seems to lead naturally, as any theory 
must perhaps accept it inevitably. And so far from matter 
being impenetrable, it is only the centres of ubiquitous atoms that 
can not interpenetrate ; their atmospheres are all and everywhere 
interdifFused. 

But what follows ? Must we turn Pantheists, and render to 
all the atoms divine honor; or rather abandon worship as 
wasted upon infinite teeming worlds? By no means. For, 
granting the ubiquity of the atom, it does not explain a single 
one of the peculiar properties of mind. "We can freely fix our 
thoughts upon things absent and far distant. This is inexplica- 
ble by the law of the atom, which determines its power at such 
a distance, and makes it the same for all directions. No atom, 
and no number or configuration of atoms, can explain the reten- 
tion or the recollection of thoughts by the mind. Nor can they 
explain the mystery of memory, in that, besides the reproduction 
of a thought, it gives us the former time of the thought, as though 
the moment itself reexisted in the mind ! Nor can they explain 
the power of fancy, — the conception of things unreal, with the 
knowledge that they are unreal. Nor can they explain the 
power of choice ; nor, to the fatalist who calls that unreal, can 
they explain the marvelous illusion. Atoms and their combina- 
tions are being ever changed and lost. They are bound by the 
laws of their being, which they never think of disobeying. The 
ubiquity of all monads, even if we could solve that mystery, 
would not help us at all in the explanation of thought, feeling, 
conscience, or any of the phaenomena of life. Matter is subject 
to the laws of time and space, which mind may observe, or 
may please not to observe. Nay, as the Divine Mind dwells in 
an Eternal Now, — is not only unchanged by age, but in the 
absolute sense grows not older; and as God is omnipresent, not 
by extension, partly here and partly there ; so finite, thinking 
spirits may perhaps dwell in a temporal Now that is longer than 
a moment ; perhaps covering the whole period of their life, 
explaining the mystery of memory we have suggested ; and in a 
Here that is larger than the personal and bodily presence ; not 
ubiquitous, simply because it is not a thing of space. From facts 



MATTER AND MIND. 



245 



that have transpired, when persons seemed in an instant to recol- 
lect their entire past life and thoughts, which no mere brain 
could hold, there is reason to believe that no mature thought 
utterly perishes, except with existence itself. As if the past life 
of each personal being were unconsciously retained, as is the 
thick heart of the mighty oak, but which an unknown power 
may quicken all at once ; which transient causes may partly 
revive ; and which, playing occasionally without the conscious- 
ness, like the fingers of the musician, may explain some of the 
phaenomena of spiritualism that are now so perplexing. 

Our theory of the ubiquity of the atom is not refuted, we 
think, by the saying that the atom attracts its fellow by a certain 
'power or force. Such power or force is either a thing or a 
nothing. The distinction of substance and attribute does not 
meet the difficulty ; for attribute is only a modification, quality, 
or form of substance, and can not exist separated from substance. 
It inheres in substance ; it can not stand without it. 

But, when we compare the qualities of matter with those of 
mind, (and by their qualities alone can we know any thing of 
either,) we find them, as already stated, wholly different. And 
we have set forth these marvels of the nature of matter, not to 
encourage the supposition that it may possess, or may be 
endowed with, the power of thinking, but for the opposite rea- 
son, viz. : to suggest to the materialist that there may be a 
spiritual substance. The subtlety of matter in its essence is 
hardly surpassed by the subtlety that is claimed for spiritual 
substance. Yet the properties of matter seem fixed by mathe- 
matical laws. Given the inner nature of the atom, its qualities 
may be as strictly deducible as the properties of a circle, or of 
the sections of the cone ; so that the change or addition of a sin- 
gle property would make the atom altogether a new thing. Such 
cl iUige or addition may be as impossible as that the properties of 
a square or a triangle should be added to those of a circle. A 
square may be attached to a circle, and have a working connec- 
tion with it ; but each will retain its own properties, will still be 
its proper self. So when a principle of life, or a thinking 
power, is superadded to matter, it perhaps can not be strictly a 

21* 



246 



SOUL AND BODY. 



property of it. The vital or thinking principle perhaps must be 
an added immaterial substance, working upon, and with, and 
through the material, yet having its own proper and distinct 
being. 

We freely grant, nay, in behalf of materialists whose piety 
and devoutness is unquestionable, we insist, that speculative 
materialism is not to be for itself condemned. And we are 
happy to know that one of our most profound thinkers and 
cautious writers takes the same view.-^ But we are also 
reminded that " the genuine and fundamental doctrines of Chris- 
tianity may become liable to the scotFs of some, and to the dread 
and disregard of others, from their supposed connection with such 
as are, in fact, no part of the gospel revelation. It then becomes 
a matter of importance to rectify even those mistakes which are 
not in themselves of any moment; since we thus (to use the 
expression of Dr. Paley) ' relieve Christianity of a M^eight that 
sinks it.' " ^ Thus, whether justly or not, it is by many believed 
that the suggestion made by Locke, that God was able to impart 
the power of thinking to a material body, gave occasion for the 
English and French deists to declare man a mere machine, who 
at death would be completely destroyed.^ And having ourselves 
observed that the doctrine we offer is disregarded by many for 

1 " It [materialism] may become pernicious by a popular misinterpretation, or 
by a malignant and sophistical comment, framed by those who are ever ready to 
take bad advantage of the ignorance of the multitude. But in its essence, this 
doctrine, false as it is, stands precisely on a level with its antagonist, idealism, 
and leaves all questions of morality and religion just what and where the}'- 
were. The question concerning the materiality or spirituality of mind, resolves 
itself into the futile inquiry respecting the inner form of substances (Novum 
Organum)^ which is always indifferent, both to theory and to practice. Whether 
heat be a diffused substance, or a mode of movement ; an emanation or a vibra- 
tion, is unimportant, both to science and to art. Such is the question concern- 
ing the occult constitution of thought; a question never to be determined, but 
one which might be determined in this manner, or in that, without, in the 
remotest degree, affecting (except by vulgar prejudice) the doctrines of the 
immortality and future responsibility of man — doctrines which rest on far 
surer grounds than that of metaphysical demonstration." Isaac Taylor, Intro- 
duction to Edwards on the Will, Note L. 

2 Whately, Difficulties of the Writings of St. Paul, Essay VI. 

^ Muenscher, Dogmatic History, § 171. Compare Cousin, Psychology. 



MATTER AND MIND. 



247 



its supposed connection with materialism, we will add a few sug- 
gestions to show that that scheme, besides difhculties of its own, 
embarrasses the interpretation of the Scriptures. 

1. If the human soul or spirit is not an immaterial substance, 
but perishes with the body, then the wicked will wholly die 
twice, and the penalty of the law will appear to be executed a 
second time. This difficulty, with another to be named hereafter, 
has led many to deny that the " resurrection of the unjust " sig- 
nifies their being made alive. 

2. This view makes the identity of man's present and future 
being inexplicable, if not impossible. Of this identity we know 
of only six possible theories. 

(1.) That the particles of the dying body will form the reviv- 
ing body. This notion has ever given occasion for sceptical 
cavil. The perishing body may be scattered over the globe. 
It may fertilize the field and become the food of man, so that 
the same particles should belong to several of the dead. Many 
die of obesity or of inanition. Shall the Resurrection restore 
to each person his own body, atom for atom ? 

Such a theory is not required by reason ; for doubtless the 
particles of the body are all changed many times in a life of 
three score years and ten, yet the man is the same self. Nor is 
Revelation responsible for the theory. For the scriptural doc- 
trine is not that of the resurrection of the Body, but rather of 
the Dead. In a single instance we read of " the redemption of 
our body," but this expression does not require the recovery of 
individual atoms. Very frequently, the graves, and other recep- 
tacles of the dead, are spoken of as yielding them up ; but we 
know that no mausoleum or catacomb can long retain all the 
dust that is committed to it. Such passages seem rather to 
denote that as Death has humbled us low in the dust, so God 
shall raise us up, delivering us from his power, and from all his 
prisons. And in the most full inspired account of the Resur 
rection, we are expressly told that the present and future bodies 
are not identical. " How are the dead raised up, and with what 
body do they come ? Thou fool ! that which thou sowest is not 
quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou 



248 



SOUL AND BODY. 



sowest not that body which shall be." " So also is the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. There ^ is a sowing in corruption, there is a 
rising in incorruption. There is a sowing in dishonor, there is 
a rising in glory. There is a sowing in Aveakness, there is a 
rising in power. There is sown a natural body, there is raised a 
spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual 
body." 

(2.) Another theory makes an unchanged organization the 
basis of identity. It is illustrated by the fact that while the 
particles of the living body change, as just stated, the organism 
remains much the same. It is sometimes illustrated by the 
repair of furniture or machinery, in which the parts may all be 
changed, and the thing be still considered the same ; also, by the 
flowing of a river, and the burning of a light. But the theory 
is defective ; since the organization of the future and immortal 
body will not be the same with that of the dying body. And a 
'partial similarity would only constitute a partial identity ; which 
is, perhaps, absurd. 

(3.) It was held by Leibnitz that things exactly similar, so 
that they cannot be distinguished, are to be taken as identical. 
This was his principle of indiscernibles.^ But if two acorns, 
alike to an atom, lay side by side, they would not be the same. 
No more so, if they Avere put successively in the same place. 
Nor, again, if the first were destroyed, and replaced by the pro- 
duction of the second. The theory is thus false in principle as 
well as in fact, though sometimes adduced to illustrate the point 
under discussion. 

(4.) " In this alone " says Locke, " consists personal identity, 
i. e. the sameness of a rational being ; and as far as conscious- 
ness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, 
so far reaches the identity of that person." And again : " Con- 
sciousness maizes personal identity."^ He should have said, con- 

1 The pronoun " it " is not required by the original. The expletive " there," 
though sometimes harsh in expression, may denote the ti"ue sense. 

2 Principium identitatis indiscernibilium ; criticised by Locke, On the Under- 
standing, 1. 2, c. 27, § 1 ; and Cousin, Vth Lecture on Kant. 

8 On the Understanding, 1. 2, c. 27, \\ 9, 10. But compare § IS. 



MATTEK AND MIND. 



249 



sciousness is the ivitness of our personal iclentit3^ It is a con- 
comitant, not a cause. If nothing else makes identity, such a 
supposed consciousness would be a delusion. Omnipotence could 
indeed make us think and feel as if we had lived such and such 
former lives ; but that would be an imposture, if we were really 
other beings. When God shall restore the memory of all 
things, the accusing or excusing conscience will be a part of our 
unchanged selves, and not a new creation. 

(5.) Another theory is, that the divine power will, in the 
proper sense, reproduce our being in the Resurrection. " As 
you might be said to be nothing," says Tertullian, " before you 
were in being, to just such a nothing will you return, when you 
cease to be. Why, then, can you not be recalled from this 
second nothing, as you think it, by the same Almighty Word 
which called you from your first. ... Be pleased, now, if 
you can, to solve the mode of your creation; and then demand 
the manner of your resurrection. . . . Whatsoever ele- 
ment has your body in destroying, in abolishing, in annihilating, 
it shall deliver up the pledge, and return you whole. For pure 
nothing is as much at the Divine Word, as tlie whole creation."^ 

Here the difficulty of an identical re-creation seems to be felt, 
and the thing destroyed is conceived as still, in some sense, sub- 
sisting. It is a " pledge," and the " second nothhig" tha.t holds 
it is only apparently a nothing. All is referred to the creative 
power, as if it retained its hold upon the vanished being. The 
theory comes to this, that the apparently destroyed being still 
subsists in God, and may be reproduced by Him. We some- 
times meet with a similar interpretation of the passage : " For 
ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." And a 
strict rendering of the words, " In Him we live, and move, and 
have our being," might be taken as a statement of the same 
view. 

How our preserved being is a continual creation, and yet not 

1 Apology, c. 48. Compare Minucius Felix, Octavius, c. 11 ; -who adds, c. 
33 : " It seems to be a work of greater difficulty to give a beginning to -what 
is not, than a restoration of being to what has been." In both these argu- 
ments, the identity of the body is the point at issue. 



250 



SOUL AND BODY. 



an emanation from God ; how we are dependent, and yet dis- 
tinct personal beings ; in short, how our philosophy shall meet 
the demand of consciousness and of conscience, and avoid Pan- 
theism, we need not now decide. But the theory under consid- 
eration is either pantheistic, reducing us to rays of being that 
may be withdrawn into the All-Being, and sent forth again ; or 
it simply asserts the unchanged purpose of God to raise up the 
dead ; that they still hold their place in his plan ; that they do 
not lose their place in his creation. 

But the purpose of God can go no further than his power. 
And if an identical re-creation is not an object of power,— if that 
which has been strictly annihilated cannot be replaced by itself, 
the theory must fail. 

(6.) There remains but one theory, the prevalent one which 
regards the soul as an entity, not destroyed by the death of the 
body, however dependent it may be on an embodiment for the 
purposes of active existence. In the doctrine of death which 
we maintain, this view of man's nature would lead us to say that 
the first and second death are the first and second instalments 
of the debt incurred by sin ; the execution of the sentence being 
divided, in such sort that those who escape the second deatli are 
in the New Testament spoken of not as properly dead, but as 
fallen asleep. 

It remains for us to show that this view of man's constitution 
is not opposed in the Scriptures, but is rather required by their 
language. 

There are in the Hebrew three words, and in the Greek two, 
by which that part of man which lives and thinks, is frequently 
put in contrast with the body. These are nephesh, akin to 
which is NESHAMAH, to wliich ijvxri is nearly equivalent, and 
which is commonly rendered soul ; and euach, to which -nvevna 
is equivalent, commonly rendered spirit. Of nephesh there 
are various shades of meaning. In connection with the word 
life, it denotes a living creature, whether man or beast (Gen. 
i. 20, 21, 24, 80; ii. 7 (last clause), 19; ix. 12, 16). It is 
used more abstractly to denote the life, the vital principle, or 
vitality (Gen. ix. 5 ; xix. 17, 19 ; xxxii. 60 ; xxxv. 18 ; xliv. 



MATTER AND MIND. 



251 



■30 ; Ex. iv. 19 ; xxi. 23). Bj a natural trope, the blood is some 
times called the life (Gen. ix. 4; Lev. xvii. 11, 14). The Greek 
^vxrj is used in the same sense (Matt. ii. 20; x. 89; xvi. 26; 
XX. 28 ; Luke xiv. 26 ; Rev. viii. 9). By a still farther refine- 
ment NEPHESH denotes the subject of sensation, or of the bodily 
appetites and affections (Num. xxi. 5 ; Deut. xii. 15, 20, 21 ; 
^xiv. 15 ; Ps. X. 3 ; in the same sense, tpvxv, in Luke xii. 19, 
22, 23). It denotes the mind, or the desires, sentiments, affec- 
tions and passions (Gen. xxiii. 8 ; Ex. xxiii. 9 ; Lev. xxvi. 43 ; 
Deut. vi. 5; xviii. 6; 2 Kings ix. 15; Prov. xiii. 19; in the 
same sense ipvxv, Matt. xi. 29 ; xxii. 37 ; Acts xiv. 2 ; xv. 24 ; 
1 Pet. i. 22 ; ii. 11, 25). Like the English word, it is often used 
in the sense oi person (Gen. xii. 5 ; Ex. i. 5 ; Lev. iv. 2 ; so the 
Greek term, Acts ii. 41 ; iii. 23). It is used in the sense of self, 
the proper and responsible being, the personal hypostasis (Gen. 
xii. 13 ; xlix. 6 ; Lev. xi. 43 ; Num. xxiii. 10 ; Ps. xiii. 2 ; so 
the Greek, Luke i. 46; xxi. 19). In the same sense it is 
applied to God (Lev. xxvi. 11 ; Jer. v. 9, 29). 

The above are a few examples taken from many. The word 
NEPHESH is also uscd in a remarkable sense, which seems to 
contradict the notion that it refers to the principle of life ; for it 
denotes a dead body in the following passages : Lev. xix. 28 ; 
xxi. 1, 11 ; xxii. 4 ; Num. v. 2 ; vi. 6, 11 ; ix. 6, 7, 10 ; xix. 
13 ; Hag. ii. 13. But the exception*may be derived from the 
rule. As in the other passages the word refers not to the mere 
body, but to the body as living and animated, so here it may 
refer to the body as Jiaviiig liYed. So our word corpse denotes a 
body that has lived ; as death itself implies a previous life. And 
there are frequent instances of words denoting precisely opposite 
ideas, by some association, or by the law of contrast. 

Both the Hebrew and Greek terms are derived from words 
that denote, to hreatlie ; as though the breath were the cause of 
life. This fact explains the tropical sense of nephesh in the 
sense of the hlood, without which there can be no life. We 
could not expect that in the infancy of mental science the dis- 
tinction of soul and body should be very clearly apprehended ; 
and a revelation must be made to man in words that answer to 



252 



SOUL AND BODY. 



his conceptions of things. To our first parents, therefore, death 
was most properly described as a return to the dust whence they 
were taken. Though even here the metonymy of a part for the 
whole seems to be required ; since the breath of life, which com- 
pleted the being of the man, was not taken from the ground. 
But in the progress of human thought and of the divine revela- 
tion, the notions of soul and body are put in marked contrast. 
Thus Isaiah speaks of the destruction of the enemies of Israel, 
" both soul and body," i. e., " from the soul even to the flesh." 
And Christ speaks of man as able to kill the body, but not the 
soul (Matt. X. 28 ; Luke xii. 5) ; where the use of the word life 
instead of soul explains nothing ; for in the death of the body 
the life is in fact destroyed. Nor will it meet the difficulty to 
say that man can destroy the life only temporarily, while God 
can destroy it eternally ; for the same is true of the body ; and 
the words of Christ make the distinction, not between the tem- 
porary and the eternal, but between the body and the soul. Nor 
can the word here rendered soul be taken as referring to the 
future, eternal life of the believer, as when it is said that his 
" life is hid with Christ in God ; " for this sense of the word life 
is altogether different, as the fact of life and the principle of life 
are different ideas ; and the former is expressed by a special 
term both in Hebrew (chajah), and in Greek (Cw^), where it 
so often occurs in the phtase " everlasting life." Even if the 
soul (ipvxv) were absolutely immortal or eternal, it would never 
be called C"^? except by a metaphor. 

Ne SHAM AH, the Hebrew term akin to nephesh, and com- 
monly denoting 5re«^A (Gen. ii. 7 ; vii. 22 ; Job xxxiii. 4; et al.), 
is three times used to denote the principle of intelligence, and is 
rendered spirit, or soul, in Job xxvi. 4 ; Prov. xx. 27 ; Is. Ivii. 
16. The second of these examples is very similar to 1 Cor. 
ii. 11. 

The distinction of soul and spirit, which we have already 
remarked as made in the New Testament, hardly appears in 
the Old. The word spirit, which both in Hebrew and Greek 
originally denoted wind, though in the Old Testament applied to 
all living things, is sometimes put in contrast with the body 



THE DETENTION. 



253 



(Num. xvi. 22; Job xxxii. 8, 18; Prov. xvi. 32; xviii. 14; 
Eccl. iiL 21; xii. 7; Is. Ivii. 16; Zech. xii. 1). In the New 
Testament, where the term spirit is usually applied to the right- 
eous, the contrast appears more strongly (Matt. xxvi. 41 ; John 
iii. 6 ; Rom. i. 3, 4; viii. 1, 5, 13 ; 1 Cor. ii. 11 ; 2 Cor. vii. 1 ; 
Gal. iii. 3 ; v. 17; vi. 8 ; Col. li. 5 ; 1 Thes. v. 23 ; Heb. xii. 9 ; 
1 Pet. iii. 18; iv. 6). The most striking passage is that in 
1 Cor. V. 5, where Paul gives direction " to deliver such an one 
umo Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be 
saved in 1>he day of the Lord Jesus." And the phrase in Heb. 
xii. 23, — "the spirits of just men made perfect," — seems to 
denote the perfecting or glorifying of the departed saints by a 
termination of their " unclothed " state, in their resurrection at 
-the last day.^ 

§ 2. THE DETENTION. 

In the words last cited there is doubtless an anticipation of 
the future, as if it were present. For those addressed in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews did not consider " the general assembly 
of the church of the first born " as being already in heaven ; 
their names only were written there. They had " not received 
the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, 
that they without us should not be made perfect" (ch. xi. 40). 

This brings us to the Christian doctrine of glorification, and 
of the relation of soul to body ; the contrast of which with the 
Platonic doctrine is not unlike that already noted between the 
two theories of man's dignity. 

The ancient philosophers, regarding Matter as inherently evil, 
and as the cause of evil, conceived of the body as the prison of 
the soul, and of death as a release, and the beginning of a higher 
life. Death was of nature ; physical immortality was impossi- 
ble, or most dreadful if it had been possible ; and the thing next 
most dreadful was a long period of metempsychosis, ere we 
should be reiinited to God, in the pure empyrean.^ 

1 Our illustrations of the use of the terms in question are taken from the work 
of Prof Bush, on " The Soul." Our conclusions, it will be seen, differ from 
his. 

2 Bretschneider, Evang. Pietismus, ^ 5. 

22 



254 



SOUL AND BODY. 



By the early Christians, on the other hand, the separation of 
the soul and body was regarded as the imprisonment. The dis- 
embodied soul was confined in Sheol or Hades, detained in that 
Underworld until the Resurrection, and not reaching its final 
destination until the judgment day. During the interval, or 
detention, as they sometimes called it, the righteous were con- 
ceived as resting in Abraham's bosom, sometimes called Para- 
dise, and the wicked as laboring in unrest and in gloom. 

Thus Justin Martyr says, the more remarkably because he 
had been a Platonist : " If you meet with some who are 
called Christians, (meaning the Gnostics,) who . . . dare 
calumniate the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and who 
say that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that at death 
their souls are received up into heaven, do not regard them as 
Christians."^ The allusion to the " God of Abraham" (Luke 
XX. 37, 38), seems to be in the style of the passage before cited 
from another martyr, Tyndale, answering to the Platonist, 
Thomas More : " And ye, in putting them [souls] in heaven, 
hell, and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and 
Paul prove the resurrection. ... If the souls be in heav- 
en, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be ? 
And then what cause is there of the resurrection ? " Irenasus 
also thus censures the Gnostics :^ " How shall not they be con- 
founded who say that the Underworld (Inferos) is this world of 
ours ; and their inner man, on leaving the body here, ascends to 
the super-celestial place?" Then, speaking of Christ's death 
and resurrection, he adds : " The souls of his disciples also, for 
whom the Lord did these things, go away into an unseen place, 
appointed them by God, and there abide until the resurrection, 
which they await. Then receiving bodies, and rising entire, 
that is bodily, as the Lord also arose, they come thus to the 
vision of God." ^ And Tertullian, alluding to the spiritual man- 
ifestations of his day, which he attributed to spirits not human, 
says the spirit " sometimes affirms itself to be a gladiator, or 
beast-fighter, sometimes a god; caring for nothing but to ex- 



1 Dial. c. Tryph. c. 80. 



2 Contra Hares. 1. 5, c. 31, § 2. 



THE DETENTION. 



255 



elude this doctrine of ours, and hinder the belief that all souls 
are compelled into the Underworld, so as to exclude the belief of 
a judgment and a resurrection."^ 

Such was the rule. The love of martyrdom sometimes 
appeared in the persuasion of an exception from it, which Ter- 
tullian sanctions thus : " No one, on leaving the body, dwells 
immediately with the Lord, except he who, by the prerogative 
of martyrdom, shall go to Paradise instead of the Underworld." ^ 
"The only key to Paradise is your blood." ^ 

In view of the repugnance of the philosophers to the doctrine 
of a resurrection, and of the impatience of the Christians for it, 
it would be passing strange if this doctrine of a detention were 
derived elsewhere than from the Scriptures. "Ye shall be 
rewarded at the resurrection of the just," is the promise of our 
Savior. And on this event Paul, with the Gospel of "Jesus 
and the Hesurrection," seems to have fixed his hopes (Rom. viii. 
23; 1 Cor. vi. 14; xv. 12-55; 2 Cor. iv. 14; v. 2-4; Eph. ii. 
6 : PhiL iii. 10-13, 20, 21 ; Col. ii. 12, 13 ; 1 Thes. iv. 14-18 ; 
V. 23; 2 Thes. i. 7 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8). When the event would 
occur no one knew; but it was expected soon (1 Tim. vi. 14; 
2 Tim. iv. 8 ; Tit. ii. 13 ; Jas. v. 7, 8 ; 2 Pet. i. 16). The pas- 
sages supposed to show that Paul expected to enter heaven at 
death, may, therefore, be easily explained otherwise. When he 
says he is " willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be 

1 De Anima, c. 57. 2 J)q Kesur. Carnis, c. 43. 

3 De Anima c. 55. For fmiher notices of this " detention," see the remarkable 
passage in the so called Gospel of Nicodemus, cc. 21-25; — the Epistle ascribed 
to Barnabas ; — the Recognitions ascribed to Clement ; — Prudentius, Hymn. pro. 
Exseq. Defunct.; — Origen, Homil. II. in 1 Reg., 0pp. II. 498; — Lactantiiis, 
Inst. Div. 1. 7, c. 21 ; — Augustine, Enchir. ad Laurent.c. 109 ; In Psalm xxxvi., 
Sermo I, c. 10 ; — Theodoret in Heb. xi. ; — Cave, Lives of the Fathers, c. 23 ; — 
Jer. Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, § 8; Funeral Discourse on 1 Cor. xv. 19: 

— ]\Iilton, Christian Doctrine, b. 1, c. 13; — Thomas Burnet, State of the Dead; 

— Edmund Law, Theory of Religion, Appendix; — Bp. Hobart, State of the 
Departed; — Bretschneider, Evang. Pietismus, §§ 30-40; — Giider, Erschei- 
nung Jesu Christi unter den Todten; — Huidekoper, Christ's Mission to the 
Underworld; — D. T. Taylor, Voice of the Church; — Miiller, Chr. Doc. of 
Sin, II. 101, 333, 317, 318: "The Chiistian faith in immortality is mdissolubly 
connected with the promise of a future resurrection of the dead." 



256 



SOUL AND BODY. 



present with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 8), it is certair ^hat his 
thoughts do not linger in the intermediate state, as if ttiat were 
to be much prized. He immediately speaks of the scene 
of judgment (vv. 9, 10). He had just said that he desired "not 
to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swal- 
lowed up of life" (v. 4) ; preferring, probably, to be "changed," 
rather than to die and rise again. For the "change" of those 
who are alive at Christ's appearing, by which the mortal body 
is somehow absorbed without a dissoluiion, seems aptly described 
as a being " clothed upon," and as a " mortality swallowed up 
of life." ^ And when Paul says in the context (v. 7) : " For we 
walk by faith, not by sight," we may suppose that his faith 
leaped the chasm between death and the resurrection, anticipat- 
ing the "unseen," yet " eternal" state of blessedness for which 
he hoped (ch. iv. 18). 

The phrase, "to be absent from the body/' may therefore 
denote, not the happiness of a disembodied state, but a release 
from the suffering and dying body, either to " sleep in Jesus," 
or to be present with Christ in the glorified body of the resur- 
rection. 

The other passage commonly supposed to show that death 
admits the soul to heaven (Phil. i. 21-23), should be compared 
with the context. Paul had just said that Christ would be 
" magnified in his body, whether by life or by death." When 
he then adds : " To live is Christ, and to die is gain," he may 
signify either the gain to the cause of Christ, by the martyrdom 
which in his prison he now awaited, or his own greater reward, 
as a martyr, in the resurrection (ch. iii. 10). Moreover, such 
were his present afilictions, that any form of death would be a 
welcome release. And as in the other passage, so here, the 
departure to be with Christ may denote either the repose of the 
saints in the bosom of Christ, or the full union with him in the 
resurrection, which Paul so earnestly desires (ch. iii. 10-14). 

And there are some reasons for supposing that the phrase 
here rendered "to depart" (ek -d uvaTivoat) may signify "tore- 

1 Compare Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 335. 



THE DETENTION. 



257 



turn," or " the release," whh special allusion to the coming back 
of the dead from Hades, of which the early Christians made so 
much. The verb here used occurs in Luke xii. 36, in the sense 
of " return." In twenty-two manuscripts of the Septuagint. 
including the Oxford, it is used in Josh. xxii. 8, for the Hebrew 
word which always signifies "to return." And in Wisd. ii. 1, it 
occurs in the phrase : " neither was there any man known to have 
returned from the grave" (uvalvaa^, hetter released). In ch. v. 
13: "An arrow . . . parteth the air, which immediately 
cometh together again" (avelvdr], retimietJi). In ch. xvi. 13, 14: 
" Thou hast power of life and death ; thou leadest to the gates of 
Hades, and bringest up again. But a man killeth, . . . 
and can not bring back (avalveL) the soul received [into Hades]." 
In 2 Mace. viii. 25: "Lacking time, they returned" (aveTiVGav). 
In ch. ix. 1 : " Antiochus returned {civa^AElviM^, De Wette, ziirucJ:- 
hehrte) in a disorderly manner from Persia." In ch. xv. 28 : 
"Now when the battle was done, returning again with joy'" 
{uvaTMovrec). The noun as used in 2 Tim. iv. 6, may signify 
" release" ; though the context here shows that the hopes of Paul 
were centered not on the event of death, but of the resurrection. 

The Parable of the rich man and Lazarus, also, will not sus- 
tain the modern expectation of entering heaven at death. 
Borrowed from the Jews themselves, it simply illustrates their 
dramatic conceptions of the Underworld. Lazarus is in Abra- 
ham's bosom ; but Abraham was dead ; and the Jews did not 
consider the patriarchs as living until the resurrection.'^ 

Nor does the reply of Christ to the thief on the cross sustain 
the modern view. The meaning may be : " I say unto thee, even 
this day, when it all seems so unlikely, thou shalt be with me in 
Paradise, when I enter my kingdom;" or the term "Paradise" 
may denote the state of the saints in the underworld. With this 
interpretation the Gnostics disliked the passage ; and we are 

1 See the Jerusdem Talmud, Cliagigah, fol. 77, 4; — Lightfoor, in loco; — 
Trench, On the Parables : " ' Abraham's bosom ' is not heaven, though it will 
issue in heaven ; so neither 'Hades' is hell, though it will issue in it, when 
death and Hades shall be cast into the lake of fire, which is the proper hell." 
22* 



258 



SOUL AND BODY. 



told that Marcion cut away the expression : " Thou shalt be with 
me in Paradise."^ 

The doctrine of a detention, so far from conducing to that of 
purgatory, has been in fact most distasteful to the Romish 
Church ; as the dispute between More and Tyndal will illustrate. 
It suffered still more for its connection, real or incidental, with 
Chihasm. In this connection, it is asserted by Justin Martyr, in 
the passage above cited, where he adds that " many, even those 
of that race of Christians who follow not pure and godly doctrine, 
do not acknowledge it. For I have demonstrated to thee that 
these are indeed called Christians ; but are atheists and impious 
heretics." In . some manuscripts and early editions of Justin, 
the first word "not" has been omitted; and in the Paris edition 
(1742) labor is bestowed to make the omission consist with the 
context. The same causes contributed to the neglect of Irenceus, 
whose only extant work has been preserved mostly in a Latin 
translation. It was supposed to be lost, until a copy was discov- 
ered by Erasmus, and given to the world. One writer, a 
Calvinist, regarding the obnoxious doctrine as a "filthy clout 
annexed to his works," says " it had been better that they had 
buried the same in eternal oblivion, than to uncover the secret 
shame of so worthy a father." ^ 

But ydiatever indirect occasion for prejudice there w^as in the 
extravagances of the ancient Chiliasts, of the Munster Anabap- 
tists, and of the Fifth Monarchy men, it is certain that some of 
the Reformers held the doctrine of detention in the intermediate 
state. Thus, Luther, in Eccl. ix. 10, says : "Another proof that 
the dead are insensible. Solomon thinks, therefore, that the 
dead are altogether asleep, and think of nothing. They lie, not 
reckoning days or years, but, when awakened, will seem to them- 
selves to have slept scarcely a moment."^ This doctrine, 

1 Epiphanins, Hseres. xlii. 

2 Pareus, Comm. on Eev. xx. 5. See J. W. Brooks, Elements of Prophet- 
ical Interpretation. 

3 0pp. Tom. IV. fol. 37, 1574. See Blackbnrne, Concerning an Intermediate 
State, CO. 4, 5, and App. ; — Bayle, Hist, and Crit. Diet. Luther, Rem. DD. 



THE DETENTION. 



259 



however, incurred the greatest odium, and exposed those who 
favored it to the severest reproaches and calumnies. Thus 
. Feuardentius says : " I call most Lutherans new Sadducees, 
who, when they read in Luther's comments that the dead 
so sleep as to know and feel nothing, . . . say that the soul 
of man dies with the body. I call the great mass of the Calvin- 
ians new Epicureans, who, hearing daily from Calvin and his 
ministers that all blessed spirits are dead, are larvce and shades 
with which we have no communion, exclaim, with the support 
of Calvin, ' Let us say that the soul is extinct with the body, 
and forthwith Purgatory, and the Mass, and the Romish Priest 
will be done away.' I call those Anabaptists, now sprung from 
the Lutherans and Calvinians, new Soul-slayers, who, in the 
year 1568, scattered through Poland the Cracow theses, of which 
the tenth is, ' We deny that any soul remains after death, but 
call that a device of Anti-Christ, to furnish his kitchen by the 
figment of Purgatory and the invocation of saints.' " ^ Calvin 
replied to these charges, addressing, not the Romanists, but the 
Anabaptists, in his " Psychopannychy." In an age of contro- 
versial abuse, this is perhaps the most objurgatory of Calvin's 
books. He repeats the reproach against the Scul-sleepers, call- 
ing them Psychotomists. The first resurrection he defines to be 
that of the sanctified soul, presently after the death of the body ; 
the second resurrection is that of the body. Thus he opposed 
one error by giving an implicit sanction to that of Hymeneus 
and Philetus, which " overthrew the faith of some." 

But the reformers had other work than to dispute about the 
economy, or to weigh the happiness, of an interim. The general 
result of their efforts, as it appears in the received theology, is 
well stated by a writer whose remarkable book should be good 
authority. " They extinguished the flames of Purgatory, and 
• enlarged the bounds of hell by adding Hades to it. No middle 
state or place was any longer believed in, but every departed 
soul entered immediately upon the place of its destination, either 
heaven or hell. They carried this point too far. It was wrong 



1 Note to his edition of Irenseus, 1. 2, c. 63^ 



260 



SOUL AND BODY. 



to make a Purgatory of Hades ; but it was also going too far to 
do it away together with Purgatory."^ 

But by this view the importance of the Pesurrection was 
entirely overlooked. The only importance that could now be 
in any way claimed for it, was that it will contribute a body, an 
addition of physical torment to the lost, and of bliss to the 
saved ; or that, ushering in a scene of judgment, it will give 
occasion for a vindication of God's dealings with mankind. Thus 
the judgment becomes a trial not so much of human conduct, as 
of the divine administration. It followed that Christians must 
think and care less about their final redemption from the power 
of death. And that they actually did so is apparent in the fact 
that in a Body of Confessions published at Geneva in the year 
1612, and designed to show a substantial agreement in doctrine 
among Protestants in order to meet the Eomish clamor about 
their variations, eleven out of the sixteen collected Confessions 
made no mention of the Resurrection. 

§ 3. PSYCHOPANNYCHY. 

Is the sentiment which Calvin expressed by this term, which 
illustrates the odd fortunes of words by its transfer to those 
whom he opposed, true ? This question is of even less im- 
portance than that concerning our identity ; save as its solu- 
tion affects our habits of scriptural interpretation. What mat- 
ters it, if the Christian is sure of immortality, with its burden of 
eternal glory, whether its consummation dates a few years earlier 
or later ? Will the future eternity be abridged by any delay ? 
If the future life were limited, we might wish to begin its enjoy- 
ment soon. Impatience for the finite is excusable; for the 
assured infinite, a faith longing with tireless patience and scorn- 
ing ages of delay as a moment, is nobler. May not a little repose 
be better for us, ere the dawn of the sleepless, endless day ? 

We do not say that it w^ill. We simply remark that the 

1 H. Jung Stilling, Pnenmatology, ed. by Prof. Bush. The work is interest- 
ing for its accounts of spiritualist phaenomena, which the author fully believed 
v/hile he advises the reader never to encourage the advances of the spirits. 



PSYCHOPANNYCHT. 



261 



Scriptures give us few hints of the condition of the soul in its 
unclothed state. Beings of angelic order, ever waiting before 
the throne of the Heavenly Father, seem to be appointed as 
ministering spirits, guardians of those who trust in him. Whether 
the angels are pure spirits, or have some kind of body, we cannot 
tell. May not an embodiment be the needful furnishing and 
equipment of every finite spirit, for the purposes of its being ? 
May not this be the only means of a relation to time and space ; 
of a sensible connection with the material world, its beauties, its 
grandeurs, its harmonies ? If the spiritual phenomena now so 
rife are the work of disembodied souls, may they not be ex- 
plained by their privation and discontent, shut out from the 
world of sight and sound, hoping for no eternal day, seeking an 
abnormal connection with matter, and playing pranks worthy 
of their respite from the gloom of night ? And in the economy 
of thinking substance, may not a material apparatus be its bal- 
lance-wheel, serving as a useful mechanism to regulate, and thus 
to help, its progress. It is well known that the brain pulsates 
strongly, with earnest thought and deep feeling ; may not matter, 
like logic, be concerned with the distinction between reasoning, 
or " discourse," and intuition ? As these two methods, or rather 
parts and features, of thought, perhaps save us, by their due 
combination, from an overwhelming instantaneousness of thought 
on the one hand, and from sluggishness on the other hand, may 
we not suppose that in the disembodied state the soul is lost in 
an intuition of its past history, with no process of thinking and 
with no note of time? The interval between death and the 
resurrection may appear as a moment ; and that moment such 
as is experienced in what may be a partial separation of soul 
and body, in the fright of falling from a precipice, or in apparent 
drowning ; when the mind, perhaps, loosens from the brain. The 
continuance of such a state may be trance, or mania. The entire 
disruption is what we call death; which to the trusting soul may 
be a repose, under the conditions we have named; not a state of 
thinking ; perhaps, on the other hand, not of unconsciousness ; 
but of momentary all-consciousness, the same to those who die 
soon cr late, the resurrection and the judgment close following. 



262 



SOUL AND BODY. 



The scriptural argument to show that the intermediate state is 
one of activity, rests on passages which are either obviously 
exceptional, or dramatic. The argument to prove unconscious- 
ness is often based on the expressions, " the dead know not any 
thing ;" " their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now 
perished ; " and, " there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, 
nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest " (Eccl. ix. 5, 6, 
10). But these expressions are evidently (vv. 2, 4) the conclu- 
sion of an Epicurean argument, including the denial of all future 
life, which the " Preacher " had taken up. And when Hezekiah 
says : " the dead cannot praise thee " (Isa. xxxviii. 18), the lan- 
guage is rather that of despair respecting any future life (v. 11). 
The same may be said of the expressions in Job iii. 11, 16; 
xiv. 10, 14; Ps. vi. 5; xxx. 9; Ixxxviii. 10-12; cxv. 17; with 
which compare 1 Cor. xv. 18, where the argument evidently 
shows that those who are fallen asleep in Christ, are not perished, 
since Christ has risen. 

The discussions of this chapter may be recapitulated in the 
words of another : 

" The soul, to be complete, to develope itself as a soul, must 
externalize itself, throve itself out in space ; and this external- 
ization is the body." " The doctrine of immortality in the 
Bible is such as to include always the idea of the resurrection. 
It is an uvdoTacLg kic tuv veKpuv. The whole argument in the loth 
chapter of 1st Corinthians, as well as the representation in 
1 Thes. iv. 13-18, proceeds in the assumption that the life of 
the hody, as well as that of the soul, is indispensable to the 
perfect state of our nature as human. The soul, then, during 
the intermediate state, can not possibly constitute, in the biblical 
view, a complete man ; and the case requires, besides, that w^e 
should conceive of its relation to the body as still in force ; 
not absolutely destroyed, but only suspended. The whole con- 
dition is interimistic, and by no possibility of conception capable 
of being thought of as complete and finak When the resur- 
rection body appears, it will not be as a new frame abruptly 
created for .the occasion, and brought to the soul in the way of 
outward addition and supplement. It will be found to hold in 



RESURIIECTIOX OF THE UNJUST. 



263 



Strict organic continuity with the body, as it existed before 
death, as the action of the same law of life ; which implies that 
this law has not been annihilated, but suspended only, in the 
intermediate state. In this character, however, it must be 
regarded as resting in some w^ay, (for where else could it rest ?) 
in the seperate life, as it is called, of the soul itself ; the slum- 
bering power of the resurrection, ready at the proper time, in 
obedience to Christ's powerful word, to clothe itself with its former 
actual nature, in full identity with the form y>-hich it carried before 
death, though under a far higher order of existence. Only then 
can the salvation of the soul be considered complete. All at 
last is one life ; the subject of which is the totality of the 
believer's person, comprehending soul and body alike, from the 
beginning of the process to the end. . . . The resurrection 
of the body will be simply the outburst of the life that had been 
ripening for immortality under the cover of the old Adamic 
nature before. The winged psyche has its elemental organiza- 
tion in the worm, and does not lose it in the tomb-like chrysalis." ^ 

§ 4. EESUERECTIOX OF THE UXJUST. 

To this endeavor after a philosophy of the resurrection, we 
may add a thought respecting that of the unjust. It is hard to 
believe that they are raised up by a miracle that ends in their 
destruction, or that accomphshes nothing but a judgment, which 
in this view must appear simply vindictive. If they have no 
immortality, why are their slumbers disturbed? But if their 
resurrection is connected with the Redemption, by a law that 
finds illustration in analagous facts, this difficulty may be re- 
moved. Damaged seeds that are sown, often exhaust their 
vitality, and perish, in germination. And w^e have noted the fact, 
that of insects which pass through the chrysalis state to that of 
the psyche, or butterfly, many, from injuries suffered in their 
original form, utterly perish in the transition. Now the Glad 
Tidings of the Redemption, quickening and invigorating the 
soul with new life, may so far repair the injury done it in 

1 Nevin, Mystical Presence, pp. 171, 172, 177. 



264 



SOUL AND BODY. 



the Fall, that even the unbelieving, who derive many benefits 
therefrom in this life, may not altogether perish in the bodily 
death. Not to say that the average duration of life is greater 
for the Gospel, it seems certain that life is of a higher type. 
Even bad men in Christendom are familiar with moral senti- 
ments, great truths of humanity, which the heathenish intellect 
has not conceived. May not such truths, as food to the souls 
even of those who do not cleave to him who is the Truth 
and the Life, cause death itself to be divided, as the proper 
efiect and token of the Redemption ? And for judgment, it is 
as if the unjust, hearing the voice of God in the last call to life, 
should be putting on a glorious incorruption, and should perish 
in the act. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

" Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought 
life and immortality to light through the Gospel.'' 

It is often alleged that tLe doctrine of the soul's proper 
immortality is supported by the common consent of mankind ; 
and many suppose that the view we have advanced is without a 
history, but is almost a new thing under the sun. Our previous 
discussions have sufficiently intimated the contrary ; but we 
ought here to give a more full account of the hopes and 
fears, the beliefs and doubts, of men in the ages past, respecting 
their future destiny. A true account of these, and a more 
full statement of the effects of the received doctrine, will furnish, 
we think, a distinct and valid argument for our view. 

§ 1. EASTEEN AND ANCIENT DOCTRINE. 

Among the Chinese, Buddhism is the only doctrine of human 
destiny that can be properly styled religious. It was introduced 
from India in the first century of our era, and its Hindoo 
doctrine of metempsychosis is too well known to be recited 
here. The other religious systems, or rather, substitutes for 
religion, are : 1st. That of Confucius, who stumbled upon the 
half-truth that virtue is its own reward, and needs no pay-day 
in an after life. The culture which he introduced might be 
called a parent-worship, and a reverence for the memory of 
the great. But this system, which has dedicated 1,560 temples 
to Confucius, is maintained simply for the sake of its rites, 
and as a useful establishment; it has no significance beyond 
23 



266 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



that M'liicli is seen.-^ And this "se'ct of the learned," says 
Dr. Morrison, " which is so miserably deficient respecting the 
Deity, is also entirely silent respecting the immortality of 
the soul, as well as future rewards and punishments. Virtue 
is rewarded, and vice punished, in the individuals, or in their 
posterity on earth ; but of a separate state of existence they 
do not speak." 

2d. The sect of the Rationalists, founded by Lautsz in the 
sixth century before Christ, resembled not a little the Grecian 
Stoics ; and, like them, so far as they held immortality at all, 
held it not for all men, but for a class. They taught the ema- 
nation of all good beings from the bosom of Reason, and their 
return thither for an eternal existence; but that the bad are 
destined to successive births with many sorrows. The immor- 
tality of the good man, however, was little more than an eternal 
fame. " Pie who does not dissipate his life is imperishable ; he 
who dies and is not forgotten has eternal life." And, as though 
an impersonal life beyond the grave were of little account, the 
sect long endeavored to find an elixir which should insure lon- 
gevity or immortality. They are now degenerated.^ 

Sd. Another sect, less numerous, held that " there is no other 
principle of all things but a vacuum and nothing ; from nothing 
all things have sprung, to nothing they must again return ; and 
there all our hopes end." ^ 

The Hindoo doctrine is most important for our argument in 
its early history. And here its form is the same that reappears 
in some of the Grecian schools, viz : that the soul is immortal 
because it is eternal. This view is stated at large in a poetical 
document of very ancient date, the Bhagavad Gita, which is 
" admitted to contain the very essence of Brahminical philoso- 
phy, and which sets forth in a most lively manner, questions 
which must have agitated the Hindoo mind at all periods." ^ 

The following extracts show its ethical and religious charac 

1 Maurice, Anc. Phil., c. 4. 

2 S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, I. 242-249. 
8 Ancient Fragments; New York, 1835, pp. 120,121. 
4 Maurice, Anc. Phil, c; 3, § 2. 



EASTERN AND ANCIENT DOCTRINE. 



267 



ter. "Let the motive be in tlie deed, not in the event. Be not 
one whose motive for action is the hope of reward." The man 
who, having abandoned all the lusts of the flesh, Vv'alketh with- 
out inordinate desires, unassuming, and free from pride, obtain- 
eth happiness. This is divine dependence. A man being pos- 
sessed of this confidence in the Supreme goeth not astray ; even 
at the hour of death, should he attain it, he shall mix with the 
incorporeal nature of Brahm." " The soul neither killeth, nor 
is killed. You cannot say of it, it hath been, is about to be, or 
is to be hereafter. It is a thing without birth. It is ancient, 
constant, and eternal. ... As a man throweth away old 
garments and putteth on new, so the soul, having quitted its old 
mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. The weapon 
divideth it not; the fire burneth it not; the water corrupteth it 
not ; the wind drieth it not away. It is indivisible, inconsum.a- 
ble, incorruptible ; it is universal, permanent, immovable. . . 
The former state of being is unknown ; the middle [present] 
state is evident; the future state is not to be discovered." ^ 

The Persians, with all their Dualism, have a restoratioriist 
doctrine of the soul. According to Zoroaster, it has Ormuzd 
for its creator, and is united to the body at its birth. At death it 
is sent to paradise, or to hell for its purification, according as 
good or evil predominates in its life, to await the resurrection 
In that day Maschia and Maschiana, the parents of the human 
race, will rise first, and the judgment succeeds. Those not yet 
purified are sent again to hell. Here the tortures of three days 
and three nights, equal to an agony of three thousand years, 
suffice to reclaim the most wicked. The world shall melt, and 
be purified; hell and its demons shall be cleansed; Ahriman 
reclaimed and converted to goodness. ^ 

Of the Egyptian doctrine of the soul Herodotus and Diodorus 
have given different accounts ; the former asserting that this 
people were " the first of mankind who had defended the immor- 
tality of the soul ;" and that they held its transmJgration through 

1 Wilkins's trans, pp. 40, 43, 36, 37. 

2 Zend Avesta; Boun Dehesch. Trans, by Du Perron, Paris, 1771. Tome 
11. pp. 341, 344, 384, 415, 410. Compare Fraser, Hist, of Persia, c, 4. 



268 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



various animal bodies, and its return to a human body, in a 
period of three thousand years. " ^ The latter tells us that they 
"considered this life as of very trifling consequence, and therefore 
valued in proportion a quiet repose after death. This led them 
to consider the habitations of the living as mere lodgings, in 
which, as sojourners, they put up for a short time, while they 
called the sepulchres of the dead everlasting dwellings, because 
they continue in the grave such an immeasurable length of 
time. "2 

The reconciliation of these statements has been attempted in 
various ways. One writer regards metempsychosis as an eso- 
teric doctrine of the priesthood, and thinks the common people 
looked to the sepulchre as their final resting place. ^ Another 
asks whether transmigration was a dreaded destiny, to be de- 
layed by the preservation of the body? or did the embalmed 
body await its re-animation, when the soul should have ended 
its wanderings ? or was this care of the body an expression of 
concern — an enacted prayer for the welfare of the soul?"* 
Another remarks that the worthy alone were embalmed, after 
an ordeal from which kings were not exempt ; and asks if the 
wicked alone were driven away from their bodies, and con- 
demned to transmigration ? " It is distinctly shown that all virtu- 
ous men became ' Osiris,' and returned again to the Good Being 
whence their souls emanated." And he concludes : " There is 
sufficient reason to believe from the monuments, that the souls 
which underwent transmigration were those of men whose sins 
were of a sufficiently moderate kind to admit that purification, 
the unpardonable sinner being condemned to eternal fire. 
Another writer, after an interesting discussion of the subject, 
says : " It would be vain to endeavor to combine these difierent 
statements and indications of opinion into a system which should 
represent the defined and universal belief of the Egyptian 
people." ® 

1 Euterpe, c. 123. 2 jjist. 1. 1, c. 51 ; cited by Heeren, Hist. Eesearches, 1. 190, 
3 Heeren, lb. pp. 190-196. 4 Schlegel, Phil, of Hist. pp. 157-160, Bohn's ed. 

5 Wilkinson, The Ancient Egj'ptians, I. 380. The last was probably an eso- 
teric doctrine, as was a similar tenet of the Greek philosophers. 

6 Kenrick, Egypt under the Pharaohs, I. 409, 410. 



THE GRECIAN SCHOOLS. 



269 



§ 2. THE GRECIAN SCHOOLS. 

The Pythagoreans. — " What simple and illiterate man or ob- 
scure woman is there now," says Augustine, " that does not be- 
lieve the immortality of the soul and a future life? Which 
point being first maintained among the Greeks in disputation by 
Pherecydes the Assyrian, Pythagoras the Samian was so touched 
by the novelty of the subject, that from a wrestler he turned 
philosopher." ^ 

Augustine seems to suppose the doctrine " new " to Pytha- 
goras was the same which in his day had become almost the 
catholic doctrine. But in fact Augustine did not understand the 
" novelty," and it will be new to many at this day. For Phe- 
recydes expressed the pantheistic sentiment of the Hindoos and 
Egyptians in a pbilosophic theory, and introduced the doctrine 
of the soul's eternal nature. Hence the remark of Cicero that 
he " first taught that the souls of men are eternal," carefully 
using the word that denoted an uncreated, divine nature.^ And 
the sequel shows that Pythagoras regarded this as the ground of 
before and after life. " They say," adds Cicero, " that Plato 
came to Italy to form acquaintance with the Pythagoreans, 
where he learned all their doctrines ; and especially that he not 
only concurred with Pythagoras on the eternity of souls, but 
gave a reason therefor; which we will pass by, if you do not ob- 
ject, and abandon all this hope of immortality." Tatian treats 
this doctrine as an arrogant opinion of the philosophers, opposed 
to the true faith in an after life. " Aristotle," he says, " is the 
heir of Pherecydes' doctrine, and traduces the doctrine of the 
soul's immortality." ^ Cudworth, speaking of " that grand mys- 
tery of the Egyptian theology (derived by Orpheus from them) 
tl at ' God is all,' " traces to the same source the Pythagorean 
d ; :trine that " no real entity is made or destroyed," as also its 

1 Epist, 137, c. 3, ed. Benedict. 

2 " Pherecydes Syrius primum dixit animos hominum esse sempiternos." 
Tusc. Qusest., 1. 1, c. 16. Donatus the grammarian says that sempiternos 
properly relates to the goA.^^ perpetuus to men, — In Andriam Terentii, act. 5. 
sc. 5. 

3 Oratio c. Grsecos, c. 25. 

2.3* 



270 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



corollary, the preexistence and transmigration of the soul.^ 
And Hitter tells us the Pythagoreans were wont to " refer all 
the appearances of individual soul-life to the universal ensouling 
energy of the world ; " and " all souls were with them an efflux 
merely of the universal soul." ^ 

The Eleatics held likewise the Pythagorean doctrine of the 
One and the AIL " The individual, by itself and separate from 
God, can have neither permanence or being." Creation is im- 
possible, as also motion ; to prove which, famous arguments 
were devised by Zeno, one of the founders of the sect.^ The ar- 
gument against creation has been lacely revived *n a work en- 
titled "Immortality Triumphant.""* Surely ttiere is nothing 
new under the sun. 

The Ionics, whose views were in some respects a transition 
from those just named to the doctrines of the Stoics, J'egarded 
the soul as " an emanated portion of the universal fire, or uni- 
versal reason, which encompasses the heaven, and rules All 
and the]'efore it can only be preserved by the constantly accru- 
ing fire." Man's life is a mere semblance. Hence the expres- 
sions of Heraclitus : " The very birth of man is a calamity — a 
birth unto death." " Death is in our life, and life in our death." 
" Men are mortal gods ; the gods immortal men, living in man's 
death, and dying in man's life." The heaven of the Ionic was 
reabsorption into the divine reason.^ 

The Stoic faith, so far as it was a faith, contemplated the im- 
mortality of a class, and will be examined hereafter. The doc- 
trine of the pleasure-seeking Epicureans is well known, at least 
in Paul's citation of it : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die." The Pyrrhonists were the avowed sceptics of the age, 
and doubted everything. But we think their doubts will not ap- 
pear altogether without occasion, when we have examined the 

1 Intell. Sj^stem 1. 553, 554. 

2 Hist, of Anc. Phil., I. 406. Morrison's trans. 

8 See Ritter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. I, 442, 443 ; — Tennemann, Manual of Phil. 
S 101; and above, p. 228. 
4 By J. B. Dods. 

6- Ritter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. I. pp. 249, 251. 



THE GRECIAN SCHOOLS. 



271 



views of the three greatest thinkers of the age, and when we 
have seen the result of the Greek philosophy in the despair of 
its later admirers. 

In the mind of Socrates the idea of Duty was paramount ; and 
with this was connected a more definite notion of the personality 
of God and of man. The human soul was indeed derived from 
God, as a spark of divinity ; but it then ceased to be a part of 
God. It was a divine being, or similar to God. In respect of 
its reason and invisible energy, it approximated to the divinity, 
and was therefore immortal.^ But by its freedom of will it 
might forsake its allegiance to God. 

Such a doctrine must be well guarded by moral considera- 
tions, lest the divinity in the bad man should become his license. 
But how should the evil soul be punished ? It could not die ; 
for that would subvert the hope of immortality itself. In the 
choice between life and death for ail, Socrates would say : " the 
soul is certainly immortal." In the Phasdo, he is made to speak 
of its destiny thus : " We should consider this, that if the soul is 
immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, 
wdiich we call life, but for all time ; and the danger would now 
appear to be dreadful, if we should neglect it. For if death 
v/ere a deliverance from everything, it would be a great gain to 
the wicked, when they die, to be delivered at the same time from 
the body, and from their vices together with the soul ; but now, 
since it appears to be immortal, it can have no other refuge 
from evils, nor safety, except by becoming as good and wise as 
possible."^ He then recites the myth respecting Hades, and the 
final judgment of souls ; and adds : " Those who appear to be 
incurable through the magnitude of their olBfences, either from 
having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust 
and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable 
destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth." 
Those who can be cured are subjected to the needful punish- 
ments. " Those who have lived an eminently holy life are set 

1 Xenophon, Memorab. 1. 1, c. 4, §§ 8, 9; 1. 4, c. 3, § 14; — Plato, Ph^do; — 
Tennemann, Hist, of Phil. § 115. 

2 cc. 129, 130. Gary's trans. 



X272 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



free from Hades and dwell on the upper parts of the earth." 
And among these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves 
by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all future 
time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than 
these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there 
sufficient time for the purpose. But for the sake of those things 
which we have described, we should use every endeavor, so as 
to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life. For the reward is 
noble, and the hope is great." 

This was the culmination of the hope of the ancients. Socrates 
himself could hardly rise again so high. He proceeds : " To 
affirm positively that these things are exactly as I have described 
them, does not become a man of sense. That, however, either 
this or something of the kind takes place with respect to our 
souls and their habitations, — since the soul is certainly immor- 
tal, — this appears to me most fitting to be believed, and v/orthy 
the hazard for one who trusts in its reality ; for the hazard is 
noble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things, as 
with enchantments ; for which reason I have prolonged my story 
to such a length." ^ He betrays the wishful nature of his hope 
when he says : " Though I should be mistaken, I gain at least 
thus much, that the expectation makes me less uneasy while I 
live, and my error will die with me." And he concludes his 
defence before his judges with this remark : " I am going out of 
the world, and you are to continue in it ; but which of us has 
the better part, is a secret to every one but God." 

Plato held the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's eternity ; 
for that " the immortal is definite in number, and it is impossi- 
ble that there should be more than there actually are ; so that 
whatever be the number of souls, all must have existed from 
eternity."^ But the soul itself is bipartite, or rather, double; 
that which is immortal being derived from the supreme God, 
and the mortal being created by the inferior gods, and main- 
tained by a constant aggregation. These are respectively the 
rational and the animal soul. The former is essential being, 



I cc. 143-145. 



2 Eitter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. II. 309. 



THE GRECIAN SCHOOLS. 



273 



and intrinsically good. It must be immortal, " because it can- 
not be destroyed by its peculiar ill, — moral evil. For an es- 
sence can only be destroyed by some ill necessarily attending it, 
not by any foreign ill ; now, the moral evil would cease to be 
such, if it annihilated the soul, and thereby released it from all 
ill."^ In this self-subsistence of the soul lay the germ of the 
restorationism of which we shall soon discover the fruit. The 
punishment of the vicious is thus described : " Those who are 
only careful about bodily pleasures, and hate all philosophical 
meditation, will feel after death the same aversion for the shape- 
less and incorporeal, and, as shades, still subject to the corporeal 
principle, will hover round their graves seeking to recover their 
lifeless bodies."^ Plato held likev/ise the migration of souls 
through various human and brute forms. 

His doctrine of eternal punishments is thus stated : " Those 
who have acted unjustly in the extreme, and have through such 
crimes become incurable, serve as examples to others. . . . 
I think, too, that the greatest part of these examples will con- 
sist of tyrants, kings, and potentates, and such as have governed 
the affairs of cities ; for these through their power commit the 
greatest and most impious crimes. Homer also testifies the 
truth of these assertions ; for he makes those to be kings and po- 
tentates that are punished in Hades through the whole of time, 
viz.: Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Tityus ; but he does not make 
Thersites, or any other private unworthy individual, oppressed 
with the greatest punishments as if incurable ; for I do not think 
he could be guilty of incurable offences."^ When we recollect 
that Thersites was the most ill-favored man in all the army with 
Achilles, and as vicious as he was ugly, we may consider the 
ancient doctrine of future punishment as far more mild than the 
modern. 

His view of the end of all things is desponding. " On the 
ground that whatever is produced must decay, he admits even 
that the duration of the divine work itself is limited, and that its 
period is determined by a perfect number. The way in which 
he makes the might of the corporeal to be overborne by the 



1 Kitter, Hist, of Phil. II. 368. 2 ibid. p. 370. s Gorgias p. 525. 



274 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



reason, is far from establishing the perfect dominion of good. 
The power of the gods over men is unable to bring all things to 
perfection." ^ Hence the doctrine of an eternal vicissitude, of 
which the so-called Platonic year v\^as the philosophic poem. 
And it is doubtful whether any aeon, or eternity, of which he 
spoke, was longer than this year of six thousand suns. 

The early censure of AristotUs doctrine of the soul is already 
noted. He made a distinction betvv^een the nutritive, the sensi- 
tive, and the rational soul. The sensitive soul is mortal ; the 
intellect is divine, imperishable, and eternal.^ It belongs, how- 
ever, not to individuals, but to all in common. It is individuated 
by connection with a body, as a plastic or formative power. The 
developments of body and soul are indissolubly connected ; for 
an organic body formed by nature is an indispensable condition 
to the existence of the soul. ^ 

In this view the statement of Plutarch, that Aristotle taught 
that "the body alone and not the soul is subject to death, for 
there is no death of the soul," ^ proves nothing to the purpose. 
But since his opinion has been disputed, we should notice the 
passages that have been cited to show his belief in an individual 
immortality. One writer quotes him as follows : " Justice is 
always the attendant of God, to punish those who depart from 
the divine law; whoever therefore will be blessed and happy 
[hereafter], ought immediately in the beginning of his life to be 
partaker of her." ^ The insertion is here a sufficient confession. 
Another passage is that in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he 
says : " There seems to occur to the dead man something both 
good and evil, just as to a living man, though he has no percep- 
tion of it; such as honor or disgrace, or the fortunes or misfor- 
tunes of friends." And again : " The question arises, whether 
the dead are affected by good or evil. Now it seems that if any 
thing good or evil does reach them, it must be either absolutely 
small, or at least small to them. Otherwise, be it of any kind 
or degree, it cannot make those happy who are not so, nor de- 

1 Ritter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. 11, pp. 882, 383. 

2 De Aniraa, 1. 3, c. 5. See Cudworth, Intell. Syst., b, 1, c. 1, \ 45. 
8 Ritter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. HI. 243, 245, 256. 

< De Placitis Phil. 1. 5, c. 25. 5 De Mundo, c. 7, cited by Dr. Jackson. 



THE GRECIAN SCHOOLS. 



275 



prive those who are happy of their happiness. The good or ill 
success of [surviving] friends has, then, plainly, something to 
do with the dead, but not so as to affect their condition." ^ Now 
the notion that Aristotle here speaks of the dead man as having 
a conscious existence, is expressly forbidden by the expression: 
"though he has no perception of" good or evil. The whole 
passage, moreover, is a critique on the remark of Solon, that no 
man should be pronounced happy during his life-time, since none 
can tell what reverses of fortune he may meet. And the design 
is to show that however men may anticipate the opinions or the 
fortunes of posterity while they live, they do pass, at death, com- 
pletely beyond their reach ; and it may then be said whether 
they have passed a happy life or not. The dead are spoken of 
as existing not really, but dramatically. And Andronicus of 
Rhodes, a famous Peripatetic, thus interprets the sense : " The 
happiness or misery which befals nations, affects the dead as 
differently from Vv^hat it would do if they were alive, as the same 
things represented in a tragedy differ from the events them- 
selves." ^ In the passage in dispute Aristotle asks whether it 
would not be altogether absurd to speak of a man as being 
happy after his death, " especially to those who say with us that 
happiness consists in an active exercise of the faculties." He 
himself employs the illustration from the drama ; and because 
he regarded all events as unreal to the dead, he might well say, 
speaking of fortitude in enduring temporal evils: " Death is the 
most dreadful; for it is the end ; and beyond it there seems to 
be for the dead man nothing more, either good or evil." ^ 

It is remarkable that there should have been any doubt on 
this subject, since the time of Averroes, of whom hereafter. 
Ritter, summing up the controversy, says ; " We must draw our 
conclusion on this point from the general context of Aristotle's 
doctrine ; and from this it is clear that he had no conception of 
the immortality of any individual rational entity, although he 
did ascribe an eternal existence in God to the universal reason." ^ 



1 1. 1, cc. 10, 11. 2 Eth. Nicom. Paraphr. 1. 1, c. 18. 3 Eth. Nic. 1. 3, c. 6. 
4 Hist, of Anc. Phil. III. 256, note. Compare Pomponatius, De Immort 



276 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



§ 3. THE POPULAR FAITH. THE PIOUS FRAUD. 

"Men have doubted their own existence, and all the first 
truths, as the result of efforts to prove them. Were not the 
doubts of the philosophers respecting the soul's immortality a 
similar effect of misplaced reasonings ? And did not the com- 
mon people, with an unsophisticated confidence, expect an after 
life ? " 

It might be so, if the philosophers had all been willing scep- 
tics ; or if their doubts had been expressed, like the idealism of 
Berkeley, as the result of their systems. But most of them, from 
Pythagoras to Aristotle, certainly wished for immortality, if they 
did not even build their systems upon the assumption of it, and 
begin to doubt when they asked themselves what was the basis 
of structures so imposing. Their doubts were those of their 
honest hours. When they strove to refute the sceptic, or to 
support the established religious system, then they seemed most 
confident respecting the after life. 

We speak of philosophers as patronizing the religion of the 
state. This may sound strangely to some ; but it is only 
a part of the famous saying of the historian of the "Decline 
and Fall," that the ancient systems of religion were " with 
the people equally true, with the philosopher equally false, 
and with the statesman equally necessary." The "pious fraud," 
which has so often been charged upon Christianity, was in fact 
a part of the heathen establishment. This was the " double 
doctrine," — the esoteric and exoteric faith, of which the former 
might be safely imparted to the wise man, but the populace 
must be instructed in the latter. And the distinction was not 
disguised. 

Thus Timgeus the Locrian, an ancient Pythagorean, is rep- 
resented by Plato as saying : " For as we sometimes cure the 
body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most whole- 

Animse, c. 14; — Mosheun, noteonCudworth's Intell. Syst., I. 98, 99 (a history 
of the controversy), and HI. 470-472; — Whately, Peculiarities of the Chr. 
Eel., Essay I. ; Future State, c. 1. For the opinion prevalent among the philos- 
ophers that the soul is a part of God, see Warburton, Divine Legation, b. 3, c. 4 



THE POPULAR FAITH. — THE PIOUS FRAUD. 277 



some have no effect; so we restrain those minds by false 
relations, which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is a 
necessity therefore of instilling the dread of those strange pun- 
ishments [of metempsychosis]." ^ Teles, another Pythagorean, 
thus consoles one afflicted for the loss of a friend : " You com- 
plain that your friend will never exist more. But remember, 
that he had no existence ten thousand years ago. . . . This, 
it seems, does not move you ; all your concern is because 
he will not exist for the future." ^ 

In his Dialogues, Plato was entitled to the license of fiction ; 
we shall therefore not insist upon the remark of Socrates, 
when his pupil read to him his " Lysis : " " Ye gods ! what a 
heap of lies this youth has placed to my account."^ But a 
passage in his " Republic" contains an explicit, though guarded, 
sanction of the pious fraud: "If falsehood be indeed of no 
service to the gods, but useful to men, in the form of a drug, 
it is plain that such a thing should be touched only by physicians, 
but not meddled with by private persons. To the governors 
of the state, then, if to any, it especially belongs to speak 
falsely, either about enemies or citizens, for the good of the 
state ; whereas for all the rest, they must venture on no such 
thing." ^ Plato is also censured by Chrysippus, as not rightly 
or wisely deterring men from injustice by frightful stories of 
future punishments. He displayed, not a wrong belief, but 
a wrong judgment, in supposing such childish terrors could 
be useful to the cause of virtue.^ And Strabo confirms the 
charge, in saying that the Brahmins had "invented fables 
in the manner of Plato concerning the immortality of the 
soul and a future judgment in the shades below, and other 
things of the same nature." ^ 

Aristotle, and after him Cicero, did the same thing, according 

1 De Anima Mundi, sub fine. 2 Stobseus, Sentt. delect:© Senno cvi. 

3 Diogenes Laert. De Vitis Phil. 1. 3, § 35 (al. 24). 

* 1. 3, p. 389. Compare 1. 5. p. 459;— I. Chase, Pref. to "Apostolical Consti- 
tutions," N. York, 1848. 
5 Plutarch, De Stoic. Kepug. c. 15. 6 Geog. 1. 15, c. 1, S 59. 

24 



278 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



to the testimony of the latter. " In each of the books/' he says, 
speaking of his Republic, " I employ rewards, as does Aristotle, 
in those which he calls exoteric." ^ 

And the Epicureans, who coveted an easy life and thought 
the prevalent religions detrimental to the social welfare, still 
humored the common notions of the gods. They were better 
than the atheistic fate ; for they might be moved by worship 
and prayer ; but destiny was altogether deaf and inexorable." 

Certain passages of Roman history reveal the same system 
of fraud. Scsevola, a Roman pontiff, declared that " societies 
should be deceived in religion." ^ And Varro, that " there 
are many truths which it is not expedient that the vulgar 
should know ; and many falsehoods, which yet it is expedient 
for the people to receive as truths." ^ Cicero, on the authority 
of Plato, thought that not to deceive for the public good vras 
nefas, a wickedness.^ In the 573d year of Rome, certain con- 
cealed books of Numa were discovered ; but being found opposed 
to the established worship, they were ordered to be burned. 
It was not pretended that they were false ; they were treated 
at their execution with the utmost respect ; the fire was lighted 
by the sacred ministers who served at the altar; they were 
probably true ; but they were unsafe.® They must be sacrificed, 
because the system of the age recognized no supremacy of truth. 

This disregard of truth is explained in part by the same state 
of things which promoted the various forms of Dualism. The 
notion of a necessity that ruled both gods and men, led to 
a blind submission to power. And power-worship, it has been 
truly said, is devil-worship. A necessitous expediency left no 

1 Epist. ad Attic. 1. 4, ep. 16. 2 Cudwortli, Intell. Syst. II. 578, 579. 

8 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, ]. 4, c. 27. 

"* Ibid. 1. 4, c. 31 ; upon which Agustine remarks : " Here he has betrayed the 
whole art of statesmen, by which states and peoples were governed." Cona- 
pare his censure of Seneca, 1. 6, c. 10. 

5 See Warburton, Divine Legation, b. 3, § 2. Compare Lactantius, Instt. Div. 
1. 2, c. 3. For the complicity of various other ancient philosophers in the pious 
fraud, including even Synesius (Epist. 105), see Warburton as above, and Leland, 
Christ. Revel, b. 2, c. 12. 

6 Livy. Hist.]. 40, c. 29. 



THE POPULAR FAITH. THE PIOUS FRAUD. 279 

place for convictions of duty. Violence and frand had estab- 
lished the four great empires of Might which are described by 
Daniel under various beastly forms, and few persons dared 
to entertain the question whether truth and utility could ever 
coincide. The rights of conscience, as well as the supreme 
obligation of religious conviction, were scarcel}^ dreamed of, 
and were yet to be vindicated by the gospel of Christ.-^ This 
terrible dominion of the idea of power is most apparent in 
the question by which Pilate expressed his surprise and per- 
plexity : What is Truth ? " A dominion of Truth w^as to his 
mind an incongruous idea. Such a plea given in answer to 
the charge of treason seemed quite irrelevant. " Truth ! what 
has it to do with the present business ? The question is about 
the supremacy of Ccesar or of a Galilasan pretender ; we know 
of no kingdom of Truth." ^ 

We have given this detailed proof of the double doctrine of 
the ancients, for two reasons : 1st, to show that the pious fraud 
is not of Christian origin ; though it did begin to corrupt Christi- 
anity, Avhen Evil began to be deemed eternal. And 2dly, because 
it bears upon the Cjuestion : What w^as the popular faith respecting 
an after life ? 

The principal testimonies of a prevalent belief in a future 
state are the following : " I know not how it is," says Cicero, 
" but a presage of ages to come is fixed in the minds of men, and 
inheres most strongly in those of the greatest genius and most 
exalted minds." ^ And Seneca: "When we w^eigh the question 
of the immortality of the soul, the consent of all mankind, in their 
fears and hopes of a future state, is of no small account with 
us."^ And Plutarch tells us it was so ancient an opinion that 
good men should be recompensed after death, that he could not 
reach either the author or the original of it. And Jamblichus, 
that in his time " all the Galatians and Thracians and most of 
the barbarous tribes taught their children to believe that the soul 

1 I. Taylor, Eestoration of Belief, pp. 73-91. 

2 Whately, Difficulties of St. Paul's Writings, Essay 1, § 1. 

3 Tusc. Qusest. 1, 1, c. 13-16. 4 Ep. 117. 



280 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



does not perish, but continues after death ; wherefore they should 
not fear death, but boldly meet every danger." He adds, that 
when a former slave of Pythagoras " had taught the Getje these 
things, and had written for them a code of laws, he was held by 
them to be the greatest of the gods."^ And Lactantius speaks 
of Democritus and Epicurus as having run mad, almost alone 
among men denying the immortality of the soul."^ 

These testimonies must be taken along with the fact that in- 
fanticide was extremely prevalent. And, as in Christian coun- 
tries abortion is often practised under the vague impression that 
the early embryo is soulless, the question arises, whether the 
faith of the ancients was not a dim sentiment that man was in- 
deed created for something more than the present life, but 
which sentiment gave way, by degrees, to despair ? "With indi- 
viduals great virtues might produce strong hopes, and great 
crimes, strong fears. But the common mind, long fed with 
fables, might become incredulous, indifferent, and the supposed 
prevalent faith become itself a fable. Does not Socrates, whose 
own hopes of a future life were the expression of a high moral 
sense, tell us of a general unbelief, when he says : " Can the 
soul, which goes to the presence of a good and wise God, 
(whither, if God will, my soul shall shortly go,) can this soul of 
ours, when separated from the body, be immediately dispersed 
and destroyed, as most men assert?"^ And this testimony 
is hardly disputed by the reply which Cato and Cicero made to 
Julius Caesar, when he opposed the execution of the followers 
of Catiline on the ground that death is no evil, but that the soul 
dies with the body. They appeal, not to an actual belief of the 
people, but to tradition ; saying that the doctrine of a future state 
of rewards and punishments was delivered down to them from 
their ancestors, and the ancients held that certain punishments 
were appointed in Hades.* But one of these statesmen thought 
it criminal not to deceive the people ; and he has given dif- 
ferent intimations of his own and the popular belief. In his 

1 Vita Pythagorse, c. 30. 2 instt. Epitome, c. 70. s Fhffido, c. 68. 
4 Sallust, De BeU. Catil. cc. 51, 53; — Cicero, Orat. lY. in Catil. o. 4. 



THE POPULAR FAITH. THE PIOUS FRAUD. 



281 



famous argument on the subject of immortality, he strives most 
of all to show, not that man is indeed immortal, but that, if he is 
not, death is not an evil. In a letter to L. Mescinius he says : 
" Even we who are happy should despise death, since we shall 
have no sense or feeling beyond it."^ And in another letter : "Nor 
shall I, while I live, suffer at all, seeing I am blameless, and if I 
shall not live I shall be past all feeling." To another : " If I am 
called to die, I shall not be so banished from the republic as to 
grieve my loss, especially as that condition will be without any 
sense." ^ And again : " Since death is the end of every thing." ^ 
And in one of his orations he avows a contempt for the notion 
of a future existence, which it is evident he supposed his hearers 
to share : " And now what evil hath death brought upon him ? un- 
less perchance we regard silly fables, and suppose that he bears 
the punishment of the wicked in Hades. . . . But if these 
are fictions, as all understand them to be, of what else has death 
deprived him, but the sense of pain?"^ And in a letter written 
on the occasion of the death of his daughter, this philosopher who 
"preferred to err with Plato" in the belief of an after life, sorrows 
as one who has no hope.^ The same is true of Seneca, who writes 
to one bereaved : " Death is the release and end of all pain, beyond 
which our evils do not pass. It restores us to the same tran- 
quillity in which we were before our birth." And in another 
letter he says: "I was pleasing myself with inquiring, yes, be- 
lieving in the immortality (aeternitate) of the soul. I could 
easily fall in with the opinions of great men, promising rather 
than proving a most desirable thing. I gave myself up to the 
splendid illusion. I began to weary of myself, and to despise 
the remnant of my happy life, ready to enter upon that unbound- 
ed time, — the possession of a whole eternity, — when suddenly 
I was interrupted by the receipt of your letter, and lost so fine a 
dream." ^ And he elsewhere says : 

1 Fam. Ep. 1. 5, ep. 21. 2 ib. l. 6, ep. 3. 3 ib. ]. 6, ep. 4. 

4 Ib. 1. 6, ep. 21. 5 Pro Cluentio, c. 61, 

6 Ib. 1. 4, ep. 6. See Whately, Future State, c. 1, note. 
' Ad Marciam de Consolatione, c. 19. 8 Epist. 102, 

24* 



282 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



" Chaos and hungry Time devour us all. 
Inevitable Death the body kills, 
Nor spares the soul." i 

And, as an ancient moralist, Seneca speaks not for himself alone. 
Epictetus, whose ethics are regarded by some as worthy to com- 
pete with the Christian system, speaking of death, says : " But 
whither do you go ? Nowhere to your hurt ; you return from 
whence you came, — to a friendly consociation with your kindred 
elements. What there was of the nature of fire in your .compo- 
sition returns to the element of fire ; what there was of earth, to 
earth ; what of air, to air ; and of water, to water. There is no 
Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon." ^ And 
the philosophic Emperor Antoninus: "He who fears death 
either fears that he shall be deprived of all sense, or that he 
shall experience different sensations. If all sensations cease, 
you will be no longer subject to pain and misery ; if you be in- 
vested with senses of another kind, you will become another 
creature, and will continue to exist as such."^ And the elder 
Pliny : " The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after 
existence, have led him to dream of a life after death. A being 
full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures, since 
the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of 
their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach 
to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, — ■ 
uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among 
these so great evils the best thing God has bestowed on man is 
the power of taking his own life." 

This last witness suggests the true state of the case. Man 
had long waited for palpable proof of an after life of the dead, 
so that Christ, as the first-born of the dead, was indeed " the 
Desire of all nations." Just as now, eighteen centuries after that 
Resurrection, men are growing weary of faith in it, and eagerly 

I *' Tempus nos avidum devorat, et chaos. 
Mors individua est noxia corpori, 
Nec parcens animaj." — Troades, 402-404. 

2 Apud Arrian. 1. 3, c. 13 ; comp. 1. 4, c. 7. 

.8 De Rebus suis, 1. 8, c. 58; comp. 1. 4, c. 14; 1. 7, c. 10. 



DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OP A CLASS. 283 



catch at audible indications of life among the dead. But faith 
failed then, as it is likelj to fail again. 

We need add but a word resi^ecting the ancient poetry in its 
relations to a future life. As in that age Truth was cast down 
from her throne, so likewise the notion of divine justice was 
" utterly perverted. It was a question then, no less than in this 
day of Bridgewater Treatises, whether the gods were either just 
or good. The finest tragedy represented them as victims, in 
common with men, of a sovereign fate. And they often appeared 
as the slaves of a worse tyranny, — that of their own passions. 
Eternal torment was sometimes threatened to the incorrigibly 
wicked for their multiplied crimes; but more commonly, the 
pains of Tartarus were the award of trivial offences, or some 
sacrilege which many would think a virtue. The sin of The- 
seus, condemned to eternal chains, was his intrusion into the 
sacred mysteries;^ and that of Prometheus, doomed to 30,000 
years' torture on bleak Caucasus, was the stealing of fire from 
heaven for the benefit of men. Is the soul's indefeasible immor- 
tality to be inferred from such poetry of such an age ? 

§ 4. FOURFOLD DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OF A CLASS. 

Modern philosophy, like the old Platonic, has made men so 
familiar with the notion of an absolute immortality of all souls, 
that the eternal existence of a certain class of mankind seems 
almost inconceivable. It will surprise many to hear that such 
a doctrine, so far from being without precedent, has a fourfold 
history. Besides the true Christian doctrine of the immortality 
of the good, there have been three counterfeit doctrines, each 
extensively prevalent, and each demanding and suggesting the 
genuine. These counterfeits are the Stoic, the Gnostic, and the 
Judaic. Three of the four doctrines answer to the most impor- 
tant faculties of the human mind ; and they all answer to cher- 

1 " Sedet, Eeternumque sedebit 
Infelix Theseus ; Phlegyasqiie miserrimus omnes 
Admonet, et magna testatur voce per umbras, 

Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos." — ^neid. vi. 617-620. 



284 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



ished sentiments of corrupted or redeemed human nature. Thus 
in the Stoic doctrine, the Will, as a power of endurance, or as 
fortitude, is regarded as -the highest good and a prestige of im- 
mortality. In the Gnostic doctrine, the Intellect is the highest 
good and the pledge of perpetuity. In the Christian doctrine, 
the Affections, — that love which is the bond of perfectness, — 
is the earnest of eternal life. And in the Judaic doctrine, the 
boast of nationality, the Ego resting in a birth of noble blood, 
lays claim to exclusive heirship of the world to come. Re- 
marking that these doctrines, though truly distinct, may be more 
or less blended in the varied characters of men, we will give 
their history ; briefly for the false, and more fully for the true. 

1. The Stoics, contemplating Destiny as the dire mistress of 
the world, may be regarded as attempting to educe virtue from 
necessity. Man's highest virtue was to endure patiently inevita- 
ble evils, or to bear up nobly and proudly against them. Their 
system had a few affinities with the ancient hero-worship, when 
virtue itself was martial even by name, and when courageous 
men were exalted to the rank of immortals by an apotheosis. 
But the virtues of a Hercules were, on the whole, too active for 
the Stoics. Their notions responded more to the supposed 
dominion of Might, v/hen men must suffer; hence a slight affinity 
between them and the patient virtues of the Christian system. 
But the Stoics were supported by no confident hope, and their 
patience was spent in suppressing the natural feelings, or in 
throwing life away when it seemed worthless. Their wise man 
vfas one who lacked nothing because he wanted nothing. 

They held to a periodical conflagration of the universe. Hence 
they could only distinguish between the good and the bad as 
destined respectively to be absorbed and annihilated. Their 
high moral feeling, however, imipelled them to seek a more prac- 
tical distinction. Hence an ancient writer tells us that "they 
held the soul to be generated and corruptible, but that it does 
not immediately perish when it leaves the body, but continues 
to exist for certain periods ; the souls of the virtuous until the 
dissolution of all things by fire ; those of the wicked until such 
.'r such times ; and that the souls of brutes perish with their 



DOCTRINE OP THE IMMORTALITY OP A CLASS. 285 

bodies." ^ Cleantlies, one of their leaders, lield that the souls 
of all men continue until the conflagration ; but Chrysippus said, 
"the souls of wise men only ; and that the Stoics believed that 
the souls of the virtuous became heroes." ^ The very names 
which they gave to the virtuous man (aTzovdaloc) and the vicious 
man {(pavXog) are redolent of their views. But the soul, like 
every other individual being, was corporeal and perishable. 
The impersonal All was stronger than any conserving power of 
virtue, and must conquer. Cleanthes and Panastius went so 
far as to establish the soul's mortality by proof.^ " Consistently 
with their whole view," says Bitter, "the Stoics could not 
ascribe to individual souls an immortality in the strict sense of 
the term ; still, as they considered them as forming a peculiar 
kind of body, they were free to assume that it will continue to 
subsist after death, until, in the general conflagration of all 
things, it shall be again absorbed into the whole from which it 
originally issued."^ 

Not unlike this doctrine was the mythology of our Teutonic 
ancestors, who " represented the glories enjoyed by the brave 
in the hall of Odin as of long continuancej indeed, but destined 
to have an end, and to last only 

' Till Lok shall burst his seven-fold chain, 
And Night resume her ancient reign ; ' 

when the gods themselves, M'ith all the heroes who v/ere the ob- 
jects of their favor, shall be overpowered by their adversaries, 
and finally annihilated." ^ 

2. The Gnostic doctrine of immortality is, perhaps, of most 
ancient date. It was the aspiration of our first parents to " be 
as gods, knowing good and evil ; " or, as Milton takes the 
phrase, — most expressive of Dualism, — "knowing good % 

1 Arius Didymus, apud Euseb. Prsep. Evang. 1. 15. c. 20. 

2 Diogenes Laert., Zeno, De Vitis Phil. 1. 7. c. 1. 

3 Tennemann, Jilanual of Phil. § 162. 

4 Hist, of Anc. Phil. III. 549, 550. Compare Dionysius Halicar. Antiq. Eom-, 
1. 8, c. 62; — Cicero, Qurest. Tusc. 1. 1, c, 31; — Tacitus, Vita Agricolae, c. 46. 

5 Whately, Peculiarities of the Chr. Rel., Essay 1, § 6. 



286 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



evil." We will not say that the words of their deceiver nieant 
that they should "surely not die ; " but it is doubtless true that 
the love of empty knowledge, whether of good or evil, for its 
own sake, and without regard to its moral uses, was the sin by 
which they fell. This is the knowingness {yvuoLg) that puffeth 
up, which Paul puts in contrast with love, that buildeth up 
(otKodofzel). And it appears in the intellectual pride, in the ad- 
miration of genius, — even when divorced from moral integrity, 
and in the preference of the sagacious man to the good man, 
that are so common. And whether our first parents hoped by 
dint of such wisdom to anticipate or to secure their immortality 
or not, it is certain that the so called Gnostics did regard this as 
the pledge of their special immortality. For such arrogance, as 
we have seen, the Valentinians were censured by Irenasus. The 
censure is repeated by Tertullian,^ and by Arnobius.^ Bunsen, 
who takes a very favorable view of their leader, says he " be- 
lieved only the souls of spiritual men immortal, as redeemed by 
Christ. They would receive spiritual bodies, as would the 
psychical souls who had striven after righteousness by good 
works ; all others would perish, like the matter with which they 
had identified themselves, and return to the demiurge world, 
' dust to dust.' " ^ Here was the vicious distinction between the 
wise and those who were only good : the former were immortal 
by nature, by right ; the latter, by mere grace and favor. 

It was a slightly Gnostic modification of the Christian doctrine, 
when in the early anthropology the regenerate and complete 
man was regarded as having mind (vovg) rather than spirit 
(TTvevfio). The result in the Alexandrian school was that, as all 
men have a measure of intellect, all will be saved. But in some 
statements of Judaic doctrine the rational soul is spoken of as 
alone immortal ; as in the passage of Abarbanel before cited. 
And in a few Jewish passages the Manichseism of the early 
Gnostics is made to express the most bitter contempt of the gen- 
tiles. Thus we are told : " Our Rabbles, of blessed memory^ 

1 Adv. Valent. c. 32. 2 Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c. 15. 

3 Hippolytus and his Age, I. 159. Compare Eitter, Geschichte der Christl 
Phil., I. 191, sq. 



DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OF A CLASS. 287 

have said, Ye Jews are called men by reason of the souls which 
ye have received from the Most High. But the people of the 
world are not called men, because they have not received from 
the Most Holy and Most High a spirit, but only a soul, from 
Belial." The former were immortal, the latter v/ould perish. 
The same doctrine is repeated by the later Rabbies in various 
form-s.-^ 

3. The Judaic doctrine, divested of the Gnostic views just 
named, was the result of ancestral and national pride. The chil- 
dren of Abraham were the true and chosen people. They were 
the heirs of salvation, and no others could be saved ^cept by 
becoming proselytes to their religion. And by salvation they 
understood an inheritance of immortality in the world to come. 
It is, perhaps, to this Jewish assumption that allusion is made in 
John i. 11-13 : "He came unto his own, and his own received 
him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power 
to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his 
name ; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." 

This Judaic doctrine is censured by Dr. A. Clarke in his note 
on Ps. i. 5,, where he says : " That the impious were never to 
have any resurrection, but be annihilated, was the opinion of 
several among the Jews and of some among Christians. The 
former believe that only the true Israelites shall be raised again ; 
and that the souls of all others, the Christians not excepted, die 
with their bodies. Such unfounded opinions are unworthy of 
refutation." The same doctrine is apparently expressed in the 
Targum on Cant. viii. 5 : " Solomon the prophet said. When the 
dead shall live, the Mount of Olives shall be cleaved asunder, 
and all the dead of Israel shall come out from under it ; yea, 
even the righteous which die in captivity shall pass through sub- 
terraneous caverns, and come out from under the Mount of 
Olives.^ But the wicked which die and are buried in the land 
of Israel shall be cast away, as a man casts a stone with a sling." 

1 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Theil 11. c. 1. 

2 This was the Jewisli conceit of the Gilgal Hanimuthim, or Rolling of th« 
Dead. 



288 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

And Grotius, noting the opinion of Kimchi that the wicked are 
destroyed soul and body, says : " The same is the opinion of R. 
Bechai respecting the Gentiles ; for he will have the resurrec- 
tion to be the prerogative of the Israelites."^ R. Saadiah Gaon 
also, commenting on Dan. xii. 2, says : " This is the resurrection 
of the Israelites who are dead, who have part in the life of the 
world to come ; but those who shall not awake are they who 
have forsaken the Lord, and therefore shall descend into the 
lowest pit of gehenna, and be for an everlasting contempt." By 
which was understood eternal death.^ Another Eabbi says that 
*' the fire of gehenna has no power over sinning Israelites, to 
annihilate them ; " but their father Abraham, by reason of his 
merits in keeping the law of God, saves them from thence.^ A 
similar doctrine appears in the Talmud.^ And Dr. Harmer, 
speaking of the testimony of Josephus respecting the opinions of 
the Jews, says that his anxiety to make them appear unexcep- 
tionable " would lead him to speak very tenderly, or rather very 
obscurely, about the subjects of the resurrection, if the Pharisees 
believed it to be a prerogative of their nation, as they did." He 
also gives reason to think that many of the Jews understood the 
life of the world to come in a literal sense.^ Which view is con- 
firmed by the words of Abarbanel : " But the sons of Israel, since 
they are just by faith, and by the law, have an inheritance or- 
dained to them in the world to come. And because the intellect 
or soul is to be stable, eternal, and ever enduring, hence it is 
said. He shall have a portion for the world to come." ^ But 
Abarbanel himself faltered in the application of the doctrine. 

§ 5. EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

We have already remarked the fact that the Scriptures say 
nothing of any eternal life or existence of the wicked, though 

1 Comm. on Matt. x. 28. Compare Buxtorf, De Synagoga Judaica, c. 8. 

2 Pocock, Not^ Misc. in Port. Mosis, c. 6 ; — A. Clarke, on Cant, viii. 5. 

3 Jalkut Chadasch, f. 55, 3. See Eisenmenger, Entdeck. Jud. Theil II. c. 6, 
p. 343. 4 Erubin, f. 19, 1 ; — Chagigah, f. 27, 1. 

5 Jewish Doc. of the Resur. 6 De Capite Fidei, c. 24. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



289 



mankind have said so much of the soul's immortality. It now 
remains to show that the early Christians, heralds as they were 
of the Word of Life, taught nothing else than the death of the 
wicked ; and that they thus gave the genuine doctrine whose 
counterfeits we have just seen. The documents which here offer 
themselves are the writings of the so-called Apostolical Fathers, 
and other early records. 

The epistle ascribed to Barnabas is probably not genuine, 
though of very early date. It is assigned by Bunsen to the reign 
of Domitian, in the first century. The phrase "eternal death" 
is here found for the first time, in the following passage : " The 
way of darkness is crooked and full of cursing (i. e. altogether 
accursed). For it is the way of eternal death, with punishment; 
in which they that walk meet those things that destroy their own 
souls" (c. 20). Here the distinction seems to be made between 
the punishment of loss, and the punishment of sense, according 
to the things done in the body. And it is afterwards said : " He 
that chooses the other part shall be destroyed, together with his 
works. For this cause there shall be both a resurrection, and a 
retribution." The literal sense of this most important phrase 
appears also in the so-called Acts of Paul and Thecla: "He 
alone is the way to eternal salvation, and the foundation of eter- 
nal life. . . . All those who do not believe on him shall not 
live, but suffer eternal death." The epistle contains an allegory 
of the land of promise, where it is said : " What signifies the 
milk and honey ? Because, as the child is nourished first with 
milk and then with honey, so we, being kept alive {^uottoloviievol) 
by the belief of His promises, and His word, shall live, and have 
dominion over the land" (c. 6). In another passage occurs a 
phrase which we shall meet again ; " For the Day is at hand, in 
which all things shall be destroyed, together with the Wicked 
One" (c. 21). 

Clement, bishop of Rome, A. D. 78-86, may be the person 
mentioned by Paul as one "whose name is in the book of 
life" (Phil. iv. 3). One epistle to the Corinthians ascribed to 
him was publicly read in many of the churches, and is probably 
genuine. Mosheim and Neander think it interpolated in some 
25 



20O 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



passages of mythical tendency ; yet Bunsen regards it as of 
great importance, "historically, constitutionally, and doctrinally." 

The writer speaks of the destiny of the wicked chiefly in the 
language of the Old Testament, which is much quoted. He 
uses no expression that can possibly suggest their eternal exist- 
ence. He speaks of "envy which leads unto death " (c. 9). Al- 
luding to the " condemnation to come " he asks : " What world 
shall receive any of those who run away from Him ? " (c. 28) — 
a question, v/e think, too readily answered now. Immortality is 
spoken of as a gratuity, thus : " How blessed and wonderful, be- 
loved, are the gifts of God; — life in immortaUty ; brightness in 
righteousness ; truth in full assurance ; faith in confidence ; tem- 
perance in holiness ! " (c. 35.) 

A second epistle, and the " Recognitions" and " Homilies," 
ascribed to Clement, are all doubtless spurious. They show 
incipient traces of the later and now received doctrine. Yet the 
first of these documents names the " combat of immortality" (c. 7); 
and the only passage we have seen cited in support of the 
modern view is the following; where, after referring to Isa. 
Ixvi. 24, the waiter says : " Let us therefore repent, whilst we 
are upon the earth ; for we are as clay in the hands of the 
artificer. For as the potter, if he make a vessel, and it be 
turned amiss in his hands, or broken, again forms it anew ; 
but if he have gone so far as to throw it into the furnace 
of fire, he will no more bring any remedy unto it" (ovketl 6orjdf/oet, 
c. 8) ; where a theologian is pleased to say : " literally, can not 
come to its cry." ^ The foi-ce of which ingenious remark is 
submitted to those who may judge for themselves. 

Ignatius of Antioch was martyred, probably A. D. 115. Of 
the eight epistles ascribed to him, three are genuine, but inter- 
polated ; viz. those addressed to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and 
the Romans. Why he was called Theophorus (the God-bearer), 
v/ill appear from the following passages of the account of his 
martyrdom : "And who is this that beareth a God within him ? 
He that hath Christ in his heart. Thou meanest him who 



1 Dr. Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, App. p. 554. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



291 



was crucified under Pontius Pilate ? Yea, verily ; for it is 
written, I will dwell in them, and walk in them." ^ And when 
condemned to be led to Rome, there to be the food of wild 
beasts, he said : " I am the food of God, and am ground 
by the teeth of wild beasts that I may he found pure bread." 

In the epistle to Polycarp he says ; " Watch, for thou hast 
already a spirit that sleepeth not" (c. 1). "Be vigilant, as 
God's athlete. The meed is incorruptibility, and life eternal" 
(c. 2). To the Ephesians he says : "As to other men, pray for 
them, — for there is a hope of their repenting, — that they may 
be partakers of God" (c. 10). And to the Romans : " I do not 
desire the food of corruption, nor the desires of this world. The 
bread of God I seek, which is the body of Christ ; . . and his 
blood, which is love incorruptible and perpetual life " (c. 7). 

These passages are from the portions which Bunsen deems 
genuine. From the rest we may cite the following : " Christ, 
our inseparable life" (Eph. c. 3). "That He might breathe 
the breath of immortality into His church" (c. 17). " The bread, 
which is the medicine of immortality, our antidote that we should 
not die, but live for ever in Christ Jesus " (c. 20). " But if, 
as some [the Docetas] who are atheists, that is to say, infidels, 
pretend, he only seemed to suffer, (they themselves only seeming 
to exist,) why then am I bound? " (Trallians, c. 10; compare 
Smyrnteans, c. 2.) The phrase " unquenchable fire " is used 
(Eph. c. 16) without suggestion of the modern view. 

Of the various letters written hj Polycarp, one only has been 
preserved, which in Jerome's time was publicly read in some 
of the churches. It contains several references to the future 
state, chiefly to the resurrection. The denial of the incarnation 
and suffering of Christ is said to be " from the devil ; " and he 
who " says there shall neither be any resurrection nor judgment, 
is the first born of Satan" (c. 7). But though thus severe, the 
writer intimates no eternal suffering of the wicked. 

This venerable disciple had heard the apostle John, and was 

1 Ignatii Martyriura, Petei-mann, pp. 486, 487. But the fiction was Avritten 
or interpolated after the time of Eiisebius, which fact explains the phrase 
"asterni cruciatus" (p. 505.) 



292 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



martyred with other Christians, probably A. D. 169, at the a^^ 
of eighty-six. An account of his martyrdom is preserved in a 
letter from the church of Smyrna, of which he was bishop, 
to that of Philomelium in Phrygia.- It contains allusions to the 
destiny of the wicked, as follows : " The martyrs, looking to the 
grace of Christ, despised earthly torments, redeeming themselves 
in one short hour from the eternal punishment. The fire of the 
fierce tormenters seemed cold to them ; for they had in prospect 
to escape the eternal and unquenchable fire, and with the 
eyes of their heart they beheld the blessings reserved for 
those who endure, which ear hath not heard, nor eye seen, 
nor have fhey entered into the heart of man " (c. 2). " Polycarp 
said [to the proconsul], You Threaten the fire that burns for 
an hour, and is soon quenched. But know you not the fire of 
the coming judgment, and eternal punishment, reserved for the 
ungodly" (c. 11). 

Here we need not insist on the fact that our account of the 
martyrdom is received at fourth hand. ^ Nor need we urge the 
fact that the writers of it, orphaned by fierce persecutors, do not 
name eternal suffering as their doom. Taking the latter passage 
as the words of Polycarp himself, we remark that Eusebius, 
who quotes it, uses the phrase " unquenchable fire " in speaking 
of the martyrdom of Christians. And Polycarp might natu- 
rally contrast such a fire, consuming the body, with that which 
utterly destroys body and soul, as if the one were "soon 
quenched," and the other an " eternal punishment." It avails 
little, therefore, that a modern divine, citing the document as a 

1 "It was penned by Euaristus, and afterwards (as appears by their several 
subscriptions at the end of it) transcribed out of Irenseus's copy by Caius, 
contemporaiy and familiar with Irenseus, out of his by one Socrates at Corinth, 
and from his by Pionius, who had with great dihgence found it out." Cave, 
Life of Polycarp, c. 6. See the " Martyrdom," cc. 20, 22. "Ipsi rerum gesta- 
rum narrationi Interpolator asceticus vim intulisse mihi videatur plus, quam 
par esset." — Dressel, Patrum Apost. 0pp. p. 391. One passage savors of the 
miraculous, where it is said that the body of Polycarp, which could not 
be consumed, being pierced by the executioner, there came out a dove and a 
quantity of blood which extinguished the fire (c. 16). The word rendered 
" dove" is not given by Eusebius or Rufinus, is variously amended by Wake and 
Le Moyne, Ruchat and Bunsen, but retained by Dressel. 



EAKLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



293 



letter to the Srayrnseans, renders the word T7]povfievov (reserved) 
" perpetually fed." ^ The writers speak of the joy of Polycarp 
that he was " thought worthy of the present day and hour, to 
have a share in the number of the martyrs and in the cup of 
Christ, unto the resurrection of eternal life, both soul and body, 
in the incorruption ^ of the Holy Spirit" (c. 14). They speak 
of his " noble martyrdom, him of blameless life from his earliest 
age wreathed with the crown of immortality" (c. 17). "By 
his patience he gained victory over the unjust prince, receiving 
the crown of immortality" (c. 19). 

The Book of the Shepherd, written by Hermas in A. D. 139 
or 140, was read by the churches of Greece as late as the time 
of Jerome. It is quoted with great respect by Irenaaus. Clement 
of Alexandria cites a passage as "divinely expressed;" and 
Origen confesses he thought it " divinely inspired." Bunsen 
calls it " one of those books which, like the Divina Commedia 
and the Pilgrim's Progress, captivate the mind by the united 
power of thought and fiction, both drawn from the genuine 
depths of the human soul." By the Council of Nice it was 
deemed almost as an inspired mirror of orthodoxy, and was the 
great exponent of the religious mind of the second century. ^ 

It consists of three parts : 1. Visions ; 2. Commands, or Pre- 
cepts of Christian Duty; 3. Similitudes. In the commands we 
meet the phrase "shall live unto God," which is the ever- 
repeated promise to the believer, and the great reward of 
obedience. It is doubtless taken from Luke xx. 38, and if we 
have explained that passage correctly, it denotes true, godly, 
spiritual life, which inherits the world to come, and is alone 
eternal. A few extracts will illustrate the writer's eschatology. 

" They who are of this kind shall prevail against all impiety 
and continue unto life eternal. Happy are they that do right- 
eousness ; they shall not perish for ever" (Vision ii. 3). "The 
fiery and bloody color signifies that this world [seculum] must 
be destroyed by fire and blood. . . . But the white color 

1 Hamilton, as above. 

2 'A(j)dapola, rendered by Crus^, " incoiTuptible felicity." 

3 Hippolytus and his Age, 1. 47, 182. 

25* 



294 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



denotes the world which is to come, in which the elect of God 
shall dwell ; because the elect of God shall be pure and without 
spot unto life eternal" (Vision iv. 3). 

"I inquire diligently into all things, because I am a sinner, 
that I may know what I must do that I may live. . . . Thou 
shalt live if thou shalt keep these my commands " (Command iv. 
2). " Fear God and thou shalt live; and whosoever shall fear 
him, and keep his commands, their life is with the Lord (Dressel, 
they shall live for ever); but they v/ho keep them not, there is no 
life in them" (Command vii.). " He that doubts, shall hardly 
live unto God" (Command ix.). "An evil desire is very hor- 
rible and wild, and by its wildness consumes men. A man is 
ruined ^ by it. For it destroys those who have not the garment 
of a good desire, and delivers them unto death." " They that are 
subject unto (evil desires) shall die for ever" (Command xii. 1,2). 

" In the summer, some trees have leaves and bring forth fruit; 
others are withered. The world to come is the world's summer, 
when the just will show their fruit, and those who are immersed 
in a variety of worldly business will remain withered and life- 
less" (Similitude iii. Bunsen's paraphrase). Or, "The trees 
which are green are the righteous, which shall possess the world 
to come. . . . The wicked, like the trees which thou sawest 
dry, shall as such be found dry and without fruit in that other 
world. And like dry wood they shall be burned" (Similitude iv.). 
" If thou defile the Holy Spirit, thou shalt not live " (Similitude 
V. 7). "This kind of men are ordained unto death. . . . 
These have hope of life in repentance. Their defection has 
some hope of renewal (dvaaTaaetog, resurrection). But death is 
eternal perdition" (Similitude vi. 2). ^ " If any one shall again 
return to his dissension (comp. Rom. ii. 8), he shall be shut out 
from the tower, and shall lose his life. . . . Many have 
altogether departed from God; they have utterly lost life" 
(Similitude viii. 8). "They who have known the Lord, and 
have seen his wonderful works, if they shall live wickedly,- 

1 AairavdraL deivuC, consumitur pessime. 

2 'O (Te Odvaroc uircoXeiav ex^t aluviov ; " They are dead and utterly gone for 
5ver." — Abp. Wake. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



295 



shall be doubly punished, and shall die for ever " (Similitude ix. 
18; comp. Jude, ver. 12). 

Thus the Apostolical Fathers. We will next examine the 
early creeds and Liturgies of the Church. 

The so-called Apostles' Creed is doubtless of very early date, 
and contains the essentials of Christian faith. It says not a 
word expressly of the destiny of the lost, but, asserting a " re- 
mission of sins," it leaves us to infer that the unbelieving and 
unforgiven have not " life everlasting." It closes with the hope 
of that life, and its whole tenor is a serene repose and joy in the 
majesty and love of God. It is the model of numerous symbols 
of the Fathers. Of about twenty of these, collected by Pearson, 
only one, that of Origen, employs extra-scriptural terms to denote 
the destiny of the lost. This remarkable document will be con- 
sidered in its place. 

A work which Bunsen styles " The Church and House Book " 
was composed, he says, " by believing souls whose names are 
known only to God, and sealed with the blood of the confessors 
of the faith. It exhibits a testimony of faith in the moral gov- 
ernment of the world, practically tried ; a testimony to the free- 
dom of mind and to the indestructibility of the dignity of man, 
against the tyranny of a Nero, and the administration of justice 
of a Trajan ; a light in the midst of the darkness of despairing 
infidelity, and of a comfortless philosophy among the educated 
classes. There is nothing v^^hich makes this document more 
venerable than its divine simplicity and childlikeness."^ 

The following passages contain its doctrine of the last things : 
" There are two ways : one is the way of life, and the other is 
the way of death ; and there is much difference in these two 
ways. But the way of life is. Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, who created thee, and thou shalt glorify 
Him who redeemed thee from death : for this is the first com- 
mandment." " Wrath and evil desire, if they be suffered always 
to remain, are demons. And when they have dominion over a 
man, they change him in soul, so that he may be prepared for a 



1 Hippolytus and his Age, II. p. vi. 



296 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



great crime ; and when they have led him into unrighteous acts, 
they will rejoice in the destruction of that man." " For ihe day 
of the Lord draweth nigh, in which every thing that is seen 
shall be dissolved, and the Wicked One shall be destroyed with 
it; for the Lord cometh, and His reward is with him" (b. 1, c. 2). 
It gives the phrase: "He eateth eternal damnation," without 
comment (b. 4, c. 3). Believers are said to "look for the hope 
of the Day of Light for ever, which shall enlighten us for ever in 
the Resurrection of the Dead. And all ye believers, if ye fulfil 
these things, and remember that ye teach one another, and 
instruct the catechumens to perform them, nothing shall try 
you, and ye shall not mourn for ever" (b. 4, c. 8 ; i. e. ye shall 
cease from mourning, for ever; comp. Dan. xii. 3 ; Rev. xxi. 4). 
" If we have sealed ourselves with this [the blood of the Lamb] 
on our foreheads, we shall be delivered from those who wish to 
destroy us. And if ye receive these things with thanksgiving 
and a right faith, ye shall be sanctified, and received into eternal 
life" (b. 4, c. 9). 

Of the voluminous "Apostolical Constitutions" that have come 
down to us, Bunsen regards as genuine tradition the Canons of 
book 8, chap. 48. The only reference to the last things is in the 
Benediction ; " Now God, who alone is unbegotten, and the 
Maker of the whole world, . . . vouchsafe to you eternal 
life, through the mediation of His beloved Son, our God and 
Saviour," etc. 

Tillemont regards the added "Constitutions" as less ancient 
than the Council of Nice. Cotelerius assigns them to the age 
before Epiphanius (A. D. 368), and thinks them greatly cor- 
rupted. These admissions invalidate all argument from the 
phrase "immortal soul" which occurs in a few passages; yet it 
may be used in a conditional sense. After the statement that 
"the continuance in being throughout all ages" is "due to the 
rational nature of man," the Sybilline leaves are cited thus : 

" Whoever have sinned impiously, 
These the earth again shall cover ; 
But all the pious shall live again in the world ; " 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



297 



with the remark that " if, therefore, this prophetess herself con- 
fesseth the Resurrection, and doth not deny the restoration of 
all things, and distinguisheth the godly from the ungodly, it is in 
vain for them to deny our doctrine (b. 5, c. 7). The entire col- 
lection contains no note of eternal suffering. 

The spirit of the early Church Liturgies is given in the follow- 
ing passages : " Make alive the souls of us all, and let not the 
death of sin have dominion over us, nor over any of thy people." 
" May they [the bread and the cup] become unto all of us who 
partake of them, faith, sobriety, healing, wisdom, sanctification, 
renewal of soul, body and spirit, communion of the bliss of eter- 
nal life, and of incorruption, to the praise of Thy most holy name " 
(Church of Alexandria, cir. A. D. 225). "Enhghten the eyes 
of our understanding, that we may partake without condemna- 
tion of this immortal and heavenly food" (Church of Byzantium, 
cir. A. D. 300). "Remember, O Lord God, the spirits of all 
flesh who have believed, from the righteous Abel unto this day. 
Thou thyself give them rest, there in the land of the living, in 
Thy kingdom, in the delight of Paradise, in the bosom of Abra- 
ham," etc. (Church of Antioch, 4th century). " Thou didst 
make man, of an immortal soul and a corruptible body ; the one 
out of nothing, the other of the four elements.-^ . . . Lead- 
ing him into the Paradise of delight. Thou didst grant him the 
control and use of all things, forbidding only the taste of one 
tree, in the hope of that which was better ; that if he should 
keep the command, he might gain immortality as the reward of 
it. . . . Yet caring for him. Thou didst call him unto regen- 
eration ; loosing the bond of death, Thou didst announce to him 
life by resurrection." " The blood of Christ, the cup of life." 
*' Partaking of the precious body and blood of Christ, . . . 
to the profit of soul and body, the preserving of holiness, the for- 
giveness of sins, and the life of the world to come" (Church of 
Antioch, close of 3d century). "That those who eat and drink 
may partake health in this world, and may attain the crown of 
eternal life in the world to come" (Spanish Liturgies). 



1 The influence of speculative philosophy is here apparent 



298 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



The phrase " immortal soul " as above noted is remarkable, 
because it is frequently employed against the early heretics. 
They were nearly all Gnostics, denying the Incarnation and the 
Resurrection. With the exception already named, they all held 
what would now be called the immortality of the soul. But 
they held it in such a form that it seemed rather a philosophy 
than a matter of faith. Theirs was in fact the ethical theology 
which dispenses with the importance of the historic facts of re- 
demption. Thus Hippolytus says that one of them, Basilides, 
" teaches the doctrines of Aristotle the Stagyrite, not those of 
Christ."^ This will explain the censure of the heretics in the 
Apostolical Constitutions, where Simon Magus, Dositheus, Ce- 
rinthus, Basihdes, Marcus, Menander and Saturninus, are reck- 
oned as " atheists," who say that "there is no Providence ; that 
we are not to believe in a Resurrection ; that there is no judg- 
ment nor retribution ; that the soul is not immortal ; " and where 
it is said that " the Basmotheans deny Providence, and say that 
the v^'orld was made by spontaneous action, and take away the 
immortality of the soul" (b. 6, cc. 10, 6). But it is afterwards 
said : " They fancy that from the dead they shall arise, spirits 
without flesh ; who shall be condemned for ever in eternal fire. 
Fly, therefore, from them, lest ye perish with them in their 
iniquities " (b. 6, c. 26). 

But the conditional sense of the phrase "immortal soul" may 
be inferred with most reason from the first case in which it oc- 
curs in a Christian work. This is in the much prized epistle to 
Diognetus, written about A. D. 135, but by whom is not known. 
It is commonly ascribed to Juj^tin Martyr; but Bunsen thinks 
that it may have been written by Marcion, less heretical than 
his reputation, though he was a disciple of Cerdo, a Valentinian ; 
and that the last section of the extant epistle was added by Hip- 
polytus. If Justin was its author, his Platonism will explain the 
phrase ; if Marcion, it can express nothing more absolute than 
the views of Valentinus. It is found as a part of the following 
similitude : " What the soul is in the body. Christians are in the 

1 Sec Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age, I. 104, 122; — Neander, Church Hist.. 
L 400, sq. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



299 



world ; " — clifFiised through it ; in it, yet not of it ; invisible ; 
hated by it, yet unharmed ; loving it in pnreness ; shut up in it, 
yet upholding it ; made better and nourished by maltreatment. 
" The immortal soul dwelleth in a mortal tabernacle ; and so do 
Christians dwell by the side of that which is perishable, while 
they wait for immortality in Heaven" (c. 6). The author had 
before said that Christians are " put to death, and they come to 
life again" (c. 5), with evident allusion to Paul's expression : 
" as dying, and behold, we live ; " i. e. in the resurrection. In 
another passage men are spoken of as having " proved unworthy 
of life ; " awaiting " punishment and death ; " and redeemed by 
the gift of "the Just for the unjust, the Imperishable for perish- 
able men, the Immortal for mortals ; " by wdiom we " attain life," 
who is "our Glory, our Strength, our Life" (c. 9). 

The destiny of the unregenerate is twice named : " Some of 
these [the philosophers] say that God is fire — call that God, 
to which they themselves are hastening " (c. 8) ; and in the 
closing exhortation not to fear martyrdom : " When thou canst 
despise that which appeareth to be death here ; wdien thou 
dreadest that wdiich really is death, a death wdiich is kept in 
store for those who will be condemned to that eternal fire which 
wiU punish unto the end^ those whom it receiveth ; — then shalt 
thou admire those who can bear patiently the earthly fire, and 
bless them when thou thyself hast tasted that fire." 

But it will be said that in the documents thus far examined 
nothing is said explicitly of annihilation. For argument's sake, 
this may be granted. The absence of all mention of immortali- 
ty or eternal sorrow for the wicked, in these books, sustains our 
assertion that this is not a doctrine of Revelation. And these 
books speak less precisely (though very plainly) of the doom of 
the wicked, for two reasons : 1. The Gospel was not designed 
to be a negation, but a message of life ; w^hich men greatly needed. 
2. The conflict with the doctrine of natural immortality did not 
assume a philosophic form until the middle of the second cen- 
tury ; and then began a manifest commixture of Christian and 

1 Mixpi tD^ovq KolcioEC. This cannot denote the common view of punish- 
ment without end; it may mean : "will exterminate." 



300 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



Platonic doctrine, the progress of which will be traced when 
we come to speak of Justin Martyr and his followers. But in 
the writings of two persons, containing the most earnest protests 
against the corruptions of philosophy, we find the doctrine of 
'"destruction" in unmistakable terms. 

IrencBus, a disciple of Polycarp, and bishop of Lyons, was 
martyred A. D. 202. His principal work, preserved chiefly in a 
Latin translation, is a refutation of existing heresies, principally 
the Gnostic. We have also the title of a work he wrote, addressed 
to Florinus, on the " Monarchy," designed to show that God is 
not the author of evil. The affectionate address to Florinus, 
preserved by Eusebius, gives the best view of the character of 
Irenaeus. 

In his "creed" he speaks of the final judgment thus: "Wicked 
spirits, and angels that have transgressed and become apostate, 
and the impious and unjust and lawless and blasphemous among 
men, will he [Christ] send into everlasting fire. But upon the 
just ... he will graciously bestow life, and grant them 
immortality, and gain for them eternal glory." ^ 

His view of the nature and destiny of the soul is most fully 
stated in the following passage, directed against the denial of 
creation and providence : " They who say that souls which lately 
began to be can not long continue to exist, but they must be 
either unbegotten and immortal, or must be born and die with 
the body, — let them know that God alone, the Lord of all, is 
without beginning or end, ever and truly the same. All things 
made by Him, because beginning their existence, are thereby 
inferior to their maker. But they continue to exist, and endure 
for length of years, according to the will of their Creator, God. 
Hence, as their beginning, so likewise their continued being, is 
His gift. For as the heavens, the sun, moon and stars, . . . 
so likewise souls and spirits, since they began to be, all continue 
so long as God wills their being and continuance. As the spirit 
of prophecy witnesseth : ' He spake and they were formed ; He 
commanded, and they were created; He established them for 



1 Adv. Haer., 1. 1, c. 10, § 1. 



EAELY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



301 



ever, even for ever and ever.' And again it saith of the salva- 
tion of man : ' He asked of Thee life, and Thou gavest him length 
of days for ever and ever ; ' the Father of all making a grant of 
continuance for ever and ever to those who are saved. For life 
is not of ourselves, nor of our own nature, but a gift of God's 
favor. And therefore he who preserves the grant of life, and 
renders thanks to Him who bestows it, shall receive length of 
days for ever and ever. But he who rejects it, and proves 
unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will not know 
Him who bestows it, deprives himself of the gift of duration to 
all eternity. And therefore the Lord speaks thus to such un- 
grateful persons : ' If you have not been faithful in that which is 
least, who will commit much unto you?' signifying that they 
who are unthankful to Him for this short temporal life, which is 
His gift, shall justly fail to receive from Him length of days for 
ever and ever. For as the animal body is not life itself, but 
partakes of life, so likewise the soul is not itself life, but receives 
the life bestowed upon it by God. Whence it is said : ' The 
first man became a living soul teaching us to distinguish be- 
tween the soul, and the life of the soul. Souls therefore receive 
their life and their perpetual duration as a donative from God, 
continuing in being from non-existence because God wills them 
to exist and to subsist. For the will of God should have rule 
and lordship in all things ; all else should yield and be subser- 
vient thereto. And of the creation and duration of the soul, let 
so much be said." ^ 

In another passage, speaking of the Incarnation, he says : 
" He who was the true bread of the Father, gave himself to us 
as milk, sharing our humanity ; that we, being as it were suckled 
by the breasts of his flesh, and inured by such nursing to eat and 
drink the "Word of God, might be able to receive the bread of 
immortality, which is the Spirit of the Father." ^ And again : 
" The incomprehensible and invisible God offers himself to men 
as visible, and comprehensible, and receivable, that He may give 
life to those who receive and see Him by faith. For as His 

1 Adv. Hffir., 1. 2, c. 34, ^ 2-4. 2ib. 1. 4, c. 38, § 1. 
26 



302 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

greatness is unsearchable, so is His goodness unspeakable, where- 
by He giveth life to those who see Him. For to live without 
life was impossible ; but the substance (vwap^ic) of life comes by- 
partaking of God ; and to partake of God is to know God and 
enjoy of Plis goodness. Men therefore will see God that they 
may live, being made immortal by the vision, and attaining unto 
God."i 

In two instances Irenaeus has been claimed as expressing the 
common view of immortality.^ But the scope of one passage, in 
which he is speaking of the resurrection, shows that he names 
the soul as immortal, not absolutely, but in comparison with the 
body, which dies and is dissolved ; not so the soul, nor the spirit.^ 
The other passage is directed against the Gnostics, who held that 
the Demiurge had not power to bestow immortality. And in 
the context he remarks that things which are by nature immor- 
tal, need no kindly help, to live for ever.^ 

One hundred and one years after the martyrdom of Irengeus, 
Arnohius published the profession of his faith. He was a rheto- 
rician of Sicca, in Numidia, under the Emperor Diocletian. He 
had been bitterly opposed to Christianity; for which reason, 
according to some accounts, he was at first refused baptism by 
the bishop of his place, supposing that his conversion was insin- 
cere. But the writing of his work against the heathen religions 
removed all such scruples, and he was then received to the com- 
munion of the Church without question. For his learning his 
writings are commended by Jerome as worthy of study, along 
with those of Origen, Tertullian, Novatian and others.^ The 
same father tells a story that Arnobius had been moved by a 
dream to embrace the Christian faith ; upon which Neander 
remarks that he " appears like one who had been led to the faith 
after a long protracted examination, and not by a sudden impres- 
sion from dreams. His work does not show the novice, who was 
still a catechumen, but a man already mature in his convictions, 
if he was not orthodox according to the views of the church." 



1 lb. 1. 4, c. 20, 5, 6. 2 Clarke, Answer to Dodwell. 

3 *' Sed incorruptibiles anima, quantum ad comparationem mortalium corpo- 
rum." ]. 5, c. 7. ^ 5^ c. 4. ^Ep. 56, ad Tranquill. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



303 



Neancler speaks also of the " free, independent manner in which 
he seems to have come to Christianity, through the reading of 
the New Testament, especially the Gospels." ^ 

From a few critics Arnobiiis has received faint praise. One 
of his editors thinks him manifestly heterodox and little ac- 
quainted with the New Testament, because he does not name 
the " everlasting fire." ^ Another commentator endeavors to 
prove his orthodoxy in the modern sense, by citing the passage 
in which he speaks of " unquenchable fii'e." ^ Before we give 
his views of the destiny of the lost, it is sufficient to reply that 
they were not even censured until long after his day ; and the' 
opposite view was not made an article of faith for 1200 years. 

" Do you smile," says he, " when we tell of gehennas and cer- 
tain inextinguishable fires, into which we know that souls are 
hurled by their enemies [the evil dnsmons] ? But does not 
your own Plato, in his book on the soul's immortality, speak of 
Acheron, and Styx, and Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, where he 
says that souls are whelmed and sunk and burned ? . . . . 
Who does not see that what is immortal and uncompounded can 
feel no pain, and that wliich feels pain can not be immortal ? 
Plato is authority for what is very like the truth. For though 
the mild and benevolent man thought it inhuman to condemn 
souls by a capital sentence, yet he thought it nothing improper 
that they should be thrown into rivers, roaring with sheets of 
fiame and noisome with reeking whirlpools. For they are 
hurled down, and, reduced to nothingness, they vanish away in 
the abortion of an eternal destruction.^ For souls are of a 
middle nature, as Christ has discovered to us, and such that they 
can die if they know not God, or be delivered from death if they 
embrace His gifts and favors. And (what men did not know 
they may now understand) this is the real death of man which 
leitves him nothing. What we see is but the separation of soul 
and body, not his utter destruction. This, I say, is the true 
death of man, when souls that know not God are consumed by 



1 Cburcli Hist. I. GSS. 2 Oeliler, Prolegomena, 

3 Le Noi;rry, Dissert. Prajvia. 

< Ad nihiluni redactse, interitionis pei-petuas frustratione yanescunt." 



304 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



long continued torment, by a fierce fire into which certain cruei 
enemies shall cast them, who were unknown before Christ and 
detected by himself alone. Wherefore we should not be de- 
ceived or deluded with vain hopes, by that which a new class of 
men, elated with an extravagant opinion of themselves, tell- us : 
that souls are immortal, next in rank of dignity to the supreme 
God, derived from him as Creator and Father, divine, wise, 
inspired with knowledge, and free from stain of gross matter. " ^ 
We have said that in the Scriptures the phrase " to know God" 
is not a definition of " life," but indicates the way of life. To 
this point Arnobius says : " Souls were formed not far from the 
yawning jaws of death, yet such that they might become long- 
lived (longtBvas) by the gift and beneficence of the Sovereign 
Ruler, if they but endeavor and strive to know Him, (for the 
knowledge of Him is, as it were, the leaven of life, preservative 
against dissolution — rei dissociabilis glutinum,) and, laying 
aside their v/ildness and inhumanity, cherish gentler sentiments 
that they may be prepared for that which shall be bestowed 
upon them." ^ 

Arnobius proceeds, with keen satire, and with lively description 
of human nature as it is, to refute the arguments then and now 
current for the soul's immortality. Is man divine ? Why is he 
half animal ? ^ Is the soul a thing of reason ? Let man show 
himself rational. * The arguments from hum.an skill, from the 
sciences and the fine arts, from man's hopes and fears, are duly 
considered.^ Also the argument from the nature of the soul 
as a simple substance ; and from its supposed reminiscences of a 
preexistent state. ^ So likewise the practical tendencies of this 
or that belief. What is immortal must be ever free ; what 
reason for alarm, if such a soul should revel in vice ? And 
what ground of hope, if, as Epicurus held, the soul must die ? ^ 
The golden mean is a mingled hope and fear, based on the doc- 
trine of a soul that may either live or die. ^ Are souls indeed 

1 Adv. Gcntes, 1. 2, cc. 14,15. It is disputed whether the Platonists or the 
Manichajans are mtended by the "novi homines." We suspect the Gnosticf. 

2 1. 2, c. 32. 3 c. 16. 4 c. 17. 5 cc. 18-26. 
6 cc. 27, 28. 7 c. 29. 8 c. 30. 9 cc. 31-34. 



EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



305 



a divine and royal offspring? how unroj'ally they behave!^ 
The notion of a preexistent state is met with a Ions; tissue of 
questions why man is reduced to his present state.^ And if 
God created souls not only where they are, but such as they are, 
is He not the author of evil ? ^ But are there too few good men 
to allow the belief that they alone will live? then by what rule 
of induction do they immortalize the race ? ^ Yet the badness 
of man does not disprove the goodness of God. For " this we 
do hold and know ; on this one clear and manifest truth do we 
take our stand, — that all the gifts of God are for the benefit 
and happiness of all ; most full of delight, love, joy, and glad- 
ness ; yielding pleasures incorruptible and ever-during ; freely 
offered to the wishes and earnest efforts of all ; and to be ex- 
cluded from them is destruction and death." ^ But " God compels 
no one, He alarms no omc with an imperious terror. For our 
salvation is not necessary to Him that He should either gain or 
lose, if on the one hand he shall make us gods, or shall let us, 
in dissolution and decay, come to naught." ^ 

If any would pass by these words of Arnobius, as not express- 
ing the opinions of his age, to whom should appeal be made if 
not to Athanasius, whose very name is redolent of immortality, 
and who is commonly styled the Father of Orthodoxy, as he 
was the master-spirit of the council of Nice ? 

This appeal is attempted in a late citation of a book published 
among the works of Athanasius. The citation is unhappy be- 
cause the words quoted do not express the modern view so de- 
cidedly as others in the same book. But it is more unhappy, 
because the book itself is deemed undoubtedly spurious, by the 
best critics." And not only did Athanasius not know the book, 
but it will be hard to show that he held its doctrine. In a few 
iir^tances only does he seem to call the soul immortal, when, 

• 1 ;-c. 37, 38. 2 cc. 39-42. 3 cc. 43-48. 4 cc. 49, 50. 5 cc. 51-55. 6 c. 64. 

" QuEestiones ad Antiochnm. See Fabricins, Bibliotli. Grseca, 1. 5, c. 2, 
§6; — Walch, Biblioth. Patfisticn, c. 4, § 12. Responsio cii. is quoted by Dr. 
Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, App. p. 546. In Respp. xvi. xvii. the 
soxil is called immortal, with argument from Matt. x.28. In Resp. xix. the 
subject is called "fearful; " and in Resp. xx. "misery" is called the proper 
punishment of the wicked. 

26* 



30G 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



evidently accommodating his argument to those who denied im- 
mortality, he says : " If the soul moves tlie body, much more 
must it have power to move itself; and, possessing self-motion, 
it must live after the death of the body. . . . How can it 
be that when it is freed from the body, it shall not have a still 
clearer knowledge of immortality ? F or if, wdien bound to the 
body, it lived a life independtjnt of the body, much more will it 
live after the death of the body. And it shall not cease to live, 
through the God who framed it thus, by His Word, even our 
Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore does it consider and contem- 
plate things immortal and eternal, because it is immortal. And 
as the senses of the mortal body are occupied with things mortal, 
so must the rational soul behold things immortal, and be il ^elf 
immortal, and live for ever. For the thoughts and conceptions 
of immortality never leave it, but remain in it ; being an incen- 
tive^ as it were, for the securing of immortality. This looks as 
if Athanasius were telling what is the proper end and aim of the 
soul, but not its destiny. He had already said : " God made 
man in His own image, giving him the knowledge of His own 
eternity, that ... by the grace* of Him who gave it, and 
by the power of the Paternal Word, he might rejoice and dwell 
with God, living a happy and truly blessed, even an immortal 
life." ^ And he concludes thus : "O thou lover of Christ, rejoice 
and be of good hope ! Because immortality and the kingdom 
of heaven is the fruit of faith and piety towards him, if only thy 
soul be adorned with his precepts. For as eternal life is the re- 
ward of those who walk in His ways, so, to those who depart 
from Him and walk not in the path of virtue, there is great 
shame and remediless doom {Kivdwoc aovyyvuGTog, a pardonless 
danger), in the day of judgment ; for that they knew the way of 
truth, but did the thing contrary thereto." ^ 

In another treatise he speaks of the original estate of our first 
parents as " a life in paradise, free from grief and pain and care, 
with the promise of immortality in heaven. But if they should 
sin, and become vile by alienation from God, let them know 

1 Oratio contra Gciitcs, c. 33; 0pp. I. 82. 2 ib, c. 2, pp. 2, 3. 

8 lb. c. 47, p. 47. 



EAELY CHRISTIAN DOCTFJNE. 



307 



that they should suffer corruption in death according to their na- 
ture, and should no longer live in Paradise, but should die in 
banishment, and remain in death and corruption. Which also 
the Holy Scripture signifies : . . . ' In the day that thou eat- 
est thereof, thou shalt surely die.' What can this mean, if not 
that they should not only die, but remain in the corruption of 
death?" Then, alluding to the Incarnation, he proceeds : God 
desired man to continue in incorruption. But men neglecdng 
and departing from the knowledge of God, and devising and re- 
garding that which was evil, incurred the threatened condemna- 
tion of death. They remained no longer such as they were 
created, but contracted corruption according to their own devices, 
and came under the power and dominion of death. For by 
transgression they reverted to their native condition ; so that, as 
from non-existence they began to be, they must now in due time 
suffer the loss and destruction of their being. And that justly ; 
for if, having once the nature of non-being, they were called 
into being by the presence and goodness of the Word, when 
they divested themselves of the knowledge of God, and turned 
aside to non-entities, (for evil things are not entities, but good 
things are entities, since they are of God, who truly is,) it 
followed that they must be also divested of the nature of existing 
for ever. That is, they must perish, and remain in death and 
corruption. For man is by nature mortal, seeing he was created 
from non-being. Yet, as made in the likeness of the true Being, 
to be preserved by the knowledge of him, he might have escaped 
the force of corruption, and remained immortal." ^ 

The scope of the argument requires us to refer this passage 
to something more than man's physical nature. In the same 
treatise the divinity of Christ is inferred from his power of giv- 
ing life to man, and because he is very life itself.^ And at the 
close the judgment of " eternal fire " and of " outer darkness " 
is' put in special contrast with incorruption and immortality. 

Thus Athanasius. He never speaks of the wicked as being 
"immortal, or as sufferin^for ever. A few other passages more 



1 De Incarnatione Yerbi, c. 4; 0pp. I. 50, 51. 



2 lb. cc. 13—16. 



308 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



naturally indicate the views so apparent in Arnobins ; ^ and the 
absence of all explicit statement of the destiny of the lost, shows 
at least that he did not regard the modern view as an article of 
faith. 

§ 6. man's intermediate nature. 

Before we examine the changing and diverging history of 
Christian doctrine, we should note more fully one of the most 
marked and most widely accepted results of the early Christian 
philosophy. We refer to the doctrine of the intermediate nature 
of man, of which the reader will have observed some statements 
in the passages just given from Irenaeus, Arnobius, and Athan- 
asius. We have already intimated this as the true doctrine 
of the soul's nature, in replying to the question, how can the 
soul be immortal at all, if it is not so by nature. And, lest 
any should think we are playing fast and loose, or that we 
are unduly burdening the faith of men, when we say that the 
soul is absolutely neither mortal nor immortal, we will cite various 
expressions of this view from writers who had been nearly 
all philosophers, and who still held the three most different 
views of the end of the wicked ; variously believing as men 
do now, some that the ungodly' would perish, others that they 
would suffer, others that they would be saved — for ever. 

Arnobius states the view most frequently ; and most clearly 
in the following passage: "If souls are of a middle nature 
(qualitatis mediae), such as can die, how can they lose this middle 
quality and become immortal ? If we say that we do not know, 
and have simply believed what we heard from a Mightier 
One, how shall we be taxed with credulity, for thinking that to 
the King Omnipotent nothing is difficult, and what is impossible 
to us is possible and easy to Him ? . . . And, moreover, 
do not you who doubt that souls are of a middle nature, 
held midway between life and death, regard all the gods, 
angels, daemons, or whatever else be the name of the beings com- 

3 See De Incarnatione Christi, cc. 14, 15, pp. 933, 934. Defence of the Ni- 
cene Definition, c. 3. §§ 9, 12; and 1st Discourse against the Arians, c. 8. § 5 ; 
c. 12. § 4 (Oxford trans). 



MAN S INTERjIEDIATE NATURE. 



309 



monlj supposed to exist. — as of a middle nature, subject to 
change in a doubtful destiny ? " And he proceeds to show 
that the gods, even if they are claimed to be immortal, are 
so, not by their own nature, but by the will and favor of the 
Pather of the gods.^ 

The elements of the same view we shall find in Justin Martijr, 
in words neaidy the same as those of Irenceus. It is given more 
clearly, though crudely and with error, by his disciple, Tatian, 
as follows : '* The soul is not in its own nature immortal, 
O Greeks, but mortal ; yet it is able not to die. For it does 
die, and is dissolved with the body, if ignorant of the truth ; but 
rises again with the body at the end of the world, receiving 
death in immortality for its punishment. Whereas the soul 
that receives the knowledge of God, though dissolved for a time, 
does not die."^ 

TheopJdlus of Antioch states the doctrine thus : vSome one 
wnll ask, Was Adam by nature mortal ? By no means. Im- 
mortal? Xot thus, either. What then — nothing at all? I 
answer, neither mortal nor immortal ; for if the Creator had 
made him from the tirst immortal. He would have made him a 
god. If mortal, then God would appear as the author of death. 
He made him, then, capable of becoming either ; so that by 
keeping the command of God he might attain immortality 
as his reward, and become a god. But if he should turn 
to mortal things, and disobey God, he would be himself the 
author of his own death. For God made man free and with 
power of self-control.'"^ 

Lactanfius says : " The other animals look downward, because 
they are of the earth, not having immortality, which is from 
heaven; but man stands erect and looks upward, because im- 
mortality is offered him, though it comes not unless given 
from God. For there would be no difference between the 
just and the unjust, if every man that is born were made 
immortal. Immortality, therefore, is not a law of oar nature, 

1 Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, cc. 35, 33; comp. cc. 61-63. 

2 Oratio ad Grfficos, c. 13. 

3 Ad Autolyc. 1. 2, c. 37. In c. 3-i, man is called (Jiicog, "intermediate." 



310 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



but the wages and reward of virtue. . . . For this reason 
God seeks to be worshiped and honored by man as Father, 
that he may attain virtue and wisdom, which alone impart 
immortahty." ^ 

Augustine apphed the same doctrine to man's bodily condition, 
thus : " Before man's sin the body might be called mortal in 
one respect and immortal in another ; that is, mortal because 
it was capable of dying ; immortal because it was able not to 
die. For not to be able to die, p.s God created some immortal 
natures, is one thing; to be able not to die is another thing." ^ 
Upon which a modern writer remarks : "A thing maybe said i-o 
be immortal conditionally, supposing such and such conditions 
performed ; and in this sense we say, God made Adam immortal ; 
for he had a power to sin, and so a power to die ; he had a 
power to stand, and so a power to be freed from death. Augus- 
tine's expression of posse non mori is known by all." ^ 

In the fifth century, the same view is. stated by Nemesiiis^ 
who from a Neoplatonist became bishop of Emesa. He says : 
"Since the soul is not yet known in its essence, it is not suitable 
to determine respecting its energy. The Hebrews say that 
originally man was made evidently neither mortal, nor immor- 
tal ; but on the confines of either nature ; so that, if he should 
yield to the bodily affections, he should share also the changes of 
the body ; but if he should prefer the nobler affections of the 
soul, he should be deemed worthy of immortality."^ 

Theophylact says ; " But the angels, although they be immor- 
tal, yet are so not by nature, but by grace ; and therefore they 
have not immortality as their own, but participate of im- 
mortality." ^ 

And Nicholas of Methone, so late as the twelfth century, 
whom Neander regards as the most learned theologian of his 
age, speaks as follows : " It is not every soul that neither 
perishes nor dies, but only the rational, truly spiritual and 

1 Inst. Div. 1. 7. c. 5; comp. Epitome, c. 35. 

2 De Genesi ad literam, 1. 6, c. 25. 

3 Burgess, On Original Sin, Part IV. c. 4, § 2. 

■* De Natura Hominis, c. 1. 5 Ad 1 Tim. vi, 16. 



MAN S INTERMEDIATE NATURE. 



311 



divine soul, "which is made perfect through virtue by par- 
ticipating in the grace of God. For the souls of irrational 
beings, and still more, of plants, may perish with the things 
which they inhabit, because they can not be separated from the 
bodies which are composed, and may be dissolved into their 
elements. . . . When any thing created is eternal, it is so 
not hy itself, nor in itself, nor for itself, but by the goodness of 
God ; for all that is made and created has a beginning, and 
retains its existence only through the goodness of the Creator." ^ 

The same doctrine is contained and adorned in these words of 
Jeremy Taylor : " Whatsoever had a beginning can also have 
an ending, and it shall die, unless it be daily watered from the 
streams flowing from the fountain of life, and refreshed with the 
dew of heaven, and the wells of God ; and therefore God had 
prepared a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his arti- 
ficial immortality. Immortality was not in his nature, but in the 
hands and parts, in the favor and superadditions of God." 

Such was the view of the most cultured and philosophic minds, 
abandoning their old hope of immortality in the soul's inherent 
nature. But this doctrine of man's middle nature was gradually 
disparted and corrupted, to end in the modern doctrine of man's 
mixed nature, of body mortal, and soul immortal, each in the 
absolute sense. This notion seems to have been matured as 
early as the time of Pelagius, against whose view of physical 
death as natural the Synod of Carthage framed its canon in the 
twelfth century. Upon which the scholiast Balsamon comments 
thus, applying to the body only what former writers had asserted 
of man's entire being : " God made man neither mortal nor im- 
mortal ; but midway between greatness and humility ; and hav- 
ing made him master of himself, and with power of free-will, he 
left him to choose either virtue or vice, and to receive either im- 
mortality or mortality." ^ 

Such has been, until the most recent times, the doctrine of the 
Church, Protestant as well as Catholic ; of which hereafter. 

1 See Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc. § 174. 

2 In Synod. Carthag., Canon cxii. 



312 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



§ 7. THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFLICT. 

The doctrine of the middle nature of man is, we think, that 
which alone explains a probation of man for life or death, or 
which makes death, either of body or soul, a possible penalty of 
divine law. Its natural result and application is also that which 
appears in our argument. But directly crossing the philosophic 
doctrine of man's nature and dignity, those Christians who first 
thought it out might fail of carrying it out consistently to its 
results. They did thus fail. They stood within reach of the 
prize that should assure life to the long despair of men; 
that should guard the promise against abuse ; and that should 
bequeath to the Church a Theodicy which was hinted in the 
words we have cited : " and that justly." They touched this 
prize, and handled it, but they did not heartily grasp and 
secure it. 

We come now to the turning point of our history, whence 
opinion began to diverge on either side of the right line we have 
been pursuing, to the confessedly fearful doctrine of eternal 
woe, and to the confessedly hazardous doctrine of a final salva- 
\ tion of all. 

About the year 138 a woman of Rome, who with her husband 
had led an abandoned life, became a Christian. She endeav- 
ored to reclaim her husband, but without success. She must 
now, if she would observe the law of Christ, seek a divorce. 
In revenge, her husband informs against her as a convert. She 
asks time to arrange her domestic affairs, when she will submit 
to a judicial investigation. Incensed at the delay, he accuses 
also her Christian teacher, who confesses his faith, and is con- 
demned to death. Another person avows to the prefect his 
conviction of the injustice of such a proceeding, is accused, con- 
fesses, and dies. Another still remonstrates, and meets the 
same fate. 

The triumph of tyranny is little favorable to meditation on 
the end of Evil ; especially in a mind of ardent temperament, 
fervid with the thoughts and impulses of a recent conversion. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFLICT. 



313 



SlicIi an one was Justin Martyr. This early defender of Chris- 
tianity, whose first Apology was occasioned by the persecutions 
just named, and was addressed to a philosophic Emperor, had 
been a Platonist. He still wore the philosopher's pallium, or 
cloak, and bore the name of " the Philosopher." He hoped for 
the salvation of upright heathens, such as Socrates, by their 
virtual faith in Christ as the source of all divine illumination. 
He claimed for the truths of philosophy and of Christianity a 
common source, ascribing the former to a diffused traditional 
revelation from God. It is a favorite argument with him, that 
the Greek sages were indebted to the Jews, the chosen people, 
for doctrines which they held in common with the Christians. 
Thus, in his " Exhortation to the Greeks," he alleges that Plato 
received from the Hebrew prophets his doctrine of the punish- 
ment of the soul in a future body, which he regards as involv- 
ing the belief of a resurrection (Apol. c. 20). In the same 
treatise he names as truths held in common by the philosophers 
and the Christians, the doctrines of the divine origin of the 
world and creation of man, of the soul's immortahty, and of judg- 
ment after this life (c. 8). 

He had escaped the Platonic form of Dualism. But that he 
brought the principle of Dualism into his Christianity, is cleai* 
from the following passages. He says : " To lay before you in 
brief what we expect, what we have received and do teach : 
Plato and we are agreed as to a future judgment; we differ in 
that Minos and Rhadamanthus are his judges ; Christ is ours. 
For the souls of the wicked, united to the same bodies, will be 
punished with eternal punishment, and not for a period of a 
thousand years only, as Plato asserted. If then any one shall 
tell us this is incredible or impossible, he must go on from error 
to error, until the fact shall prove us to be in the right" (c. 8). 
Again : " Each one is going on to eternal punishment or salva- 
tion, according to the merit of his deeds. If now all men knew 
these things, would any one choose vice for a season, knowing 
that he goes to eternal condemnation by fire ? and not rather, 
by all means, restrain himself and adorn his soul with virtue, so 
as to attain the blessing of God, and avoid His punishment ? 
27 

I 



314 



TFIE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



(c. 12). Again : " When we teach a general conflagration, what 
do we more than the Stoics ? When we assert that the souls of 
the wicked are punished in a state of sensibility after death, and 
that the souls of the virtuous escaping those punishments, pass a 
happy life, we seem to assert no more than your poets and phi- 
losophers have done" (c. 20). Again: "Christ has foretold to 
us that he [Satan] with his host and the men who follow him, 
will be sent into fire to be punished for a boundless duration" 
(c. 28). And again: "He [Christ] shall raise iip the bodies of 
all men who have ever lived ; those of the worthy he will clothe 
with incorruption ; those of the wicked he will send, in eternal 
sensibility, with evil dsemons, into eternal fire. . . . But with 
what sensation and punishment the wicked will suffer, hear such 
statements as these : Their worm shall not be quiet, and their fire 
shall not be quenched ; and then shall they repent when it will 
avail them nothing" (c. 52). And in his second Apology, writ- 
ten probably a short time after, Justin uses similar language, 
adding that he is not employing the empty alarms and affrights 
of the so-called philosophers, and would not drive men to the 
love of virtue by terror, as might be supposed (c. 13). 

Here the use of the plural (punishments) instead of the singu- 
lar, is to be noted, as also a disquieted if not burdened faith. 
" O, if men would only believe what impends over them !" is the 
saddening reflection of his mind, the rising cloud that began to 
begloom the Christian's sky. 

Yet he never calls the soul immortal. The reason of this is 
very apparent in his " Dialogue with Trypho," from which some 
have inferred that when he wrote this Dialogue he held the im- 
mortality of the righteous alone. We are not prepared to say 
that this became his settled faith. We think, rather, that this 
seemed to him probable, and relieved the distress that is manifest 
in his Apologies. This might be true, though in one or two 
expressions he should give another view. But let us read his 
own words. 

After a discussion of the soul's preexistence and eternity, he 
represents the aged Christian with whom he converses as saying: 
" But if the world was created, it must follow that souls were 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFLICT. 



315 



created also, and that there was a time when they were not ; for 
I they were created for the sake of men and other living creatures, 
even if you should say that they were created separately, and 
without their proper bodies." Justin. — "This has the appear- 
ance of truth." C. — "Therefore they are not immortal." J. — 
" No, they are not, seeing it is evident that the world was cre- 
ated." C. — "However, I do not say that all souls will die ; for 
that would be good news indeed to the bad. What then ? Wliy, 
that the souls of the righteous remain in some better place, but 
the evil and wicked in a worse, waiting until the time of judg- 
ment. And so the former, being worthy to appear before God, 
shall not die any more ; and the latter shall be punished so long 
as it shall please God that they exist and be punished." 

It is v»'ell known that in this passage the Greek phrase for 
"all souls" ('TTciaag Tu^ ipvxo.^) is in itself ambiguous; the words 
may also mean " any souls." We decline this translation as not 
demanded by the vfords immediately following ; for Christian, 
we think, does not mean that annihilation would be gain to the 
wicked as their special doom, but either as painless, or as a com- 
mon lot of man. This translation is also less consistent with the 
subsequent expressions; one person who makes it betrays a 
strong bias in rendering the term "worse" (x^tpovL) "a place of 
misery and torment;" and the translation we have given is 
approved by the best authorities.-^ 

1 Our rendering of the disputed passage is supported by Thirlby, ed. Justini 
0pp. Lond. 1722; — Otto, ed. Lips. 1847, where, however, he regards Justin as 
holding the modern opinion ; so lilveAvise, Bp. Kaye, Writings and Opinions 
of Justin, c. 5. He is regarded as holding the final destruction of the wicked by 
Grotius, Comm. in Matt. xxv. 46: — (who is quoted by Calovius, ibid.); — by 
Huet, Origeniana, 1. 2, q. 11, c. 25 ; — Rossler, Bibliothelc d. Kirchenviiter, I. 
141; Lehrbegritf d. Chr. Kirche, p. 202; — Du Pin, Biblioth. Pat., art. Justin; 
— Doederlein, Inst. Cln*. Theol. § 224; — Miinscher, Handbuch d. Clir. Dogm. 
ir. 483, 516; — Munter, Handbuch d. altesten Chr. Dogm. H. 2. 191,279"; — 
Daiiiel, Tatianus d. Apologet. pp. 225, 229; — Plase, Lehrbucli d. evang. Dog- 
matilc (2 Aufl.) p. 126;— Starck, Freimlithige Betracht. liber d. Christenthum, 
pp. 345, 347; — Kern, Ciir. Eschatologie, Tiib. Zeitschrift f. Theologie, 1840, HI. 
82; — Otto, De Justini Mart. Scriptis et Docti-ina, 1841, §§ 62, 76; — Ritter, Ge- 
schiclite d. Clir. Phil. I. 304; — Jer. Taylor, Christ's Advent to Judgment; — J. 
Pye Smith, First Lines of Chr. Theol. ; — Bloomfield, Critical Digest, on Miitt 
xx\. 46 ; — GiesB ' 3r, Dogmengeschichte, § 45, who makes perhaps the truest stato- 



316 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



To the last speech of Christian, Justin replies by asking if this 
is not the same with that which Plato darkly intimates in his 
Timteus ; referring to a passage in which Plato speaks of the 
special origination by the supreme God of the creatures whom it 
behoves " to be of immortal rank, being called divine, taking the 
lead among those who ever follow a just example." And Justin 
remarks : " God alone is uncreated and incorruptible, and there- 
fore he is God ; but all other things besides him are created and 
corruptible. For this reason souls both die and are punished. 
For if they were uncreated, they could not sin, nor be guilty of 
folly ; nor could they be timorous, and then bold again." lie 
then digresses into an argument for monotheism from the princi- 
ples of the philosophers, to which Christian replies : " I neither 
regard Plato nor Pythagoras, nor indeed any of their way of 
thinking. For that this [which he had before said] is the truth, 
is evident from hence. The soul either has life in itself, or it 
receives it from something else. But if it has life in itself, it 
would be the cause of life to something else, and not to itself ; as 
motion may rather be said to move something else, than itself. 
That the soul lives, no one can deny. But if it lives, it lives not 
as being itself life, but as receiving life. Now, whatever partakes 
of any thing, is different from that of which it partakes. But the 
soul partakes of life, because God wills it to live ; and just so too 
it will no longer partake of life, whenever He does not desire it 
to live. For it cannot live of itself, as God does. But as the 
personal man does not always exist, and body and soul are not 
ever conjoined; but, whenever this harmony must be dissolved, 
the soul leaves the body, and the man is no more ; so likewise 
vv'henever it is necessary that the soul shoyld no longer be, the 
vital spirit leaves it, and the sOul is no more, but itself returns 
again thither, whence it was taken " (cc. 4-G). 

These passages, compared with those previously cited, show 
an unsettled opinion ; which may appear also in the following, 
where he speaks of eternal punishment without naming it as 
conscious suffering. Thus he says that Christ became man, that 

ment of the case: "Justin appears to regard it as possible that the souls of the 
.ingodly will be at some time wholly annihilated." 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFLICT. 



317 



"that wicked serpent which did sin from the beginning, and the 
angels that have become like him, might be destroyed (KaTnXvdcjcc) 
and death despised, and finally at Christ's second coming cease from 
those who believe and live according to His will, and afterwards 
be no more ; when some shall be sent unto the condemnation and 
judgment of fire to be punished unceasingly, and others shall 
dwell together in incorruption, and immortality, free from pain 
and sorrow" (c. 45; comp. c. 100). Again: " If they should 
choose such things as are well pleasing in His sight. He 
would place them in a state of incorruption, where they should 
not be liable to any pain or punishment ; but if they should do 
that which is evil, He would inflict such punishment upon them 
as He should think proper" (c. 88). Again: "He shall raise 
up all mankind, and shall make some incorruptible, immortal, 
and free from pain, and place them in an eternal and indissolu- 
ble kingdom ; but shall consign over others to the punishment 
of eternal fire" (c. 117). With these should be compared the 
expression in the second Apology: " God delays the break- 
ing up and dissolution of the world, so that evil angels and 
daemons and men may cease to be (^?//cen uai), for the sake of the 
Christians, who are, in His mind, the [final] cause of nature" 
(c. 7). Here we cannot, with Semisch, ^ regard the phrase as 
an "inconsiderate hyperbole," but rather a.s betraying a latent 
persuasion of Justin's mind. 

Yet a single passage in the Dialogue forbids the belief that 
this was his settled opinion, while it discovers a most crude and 
contradictory exegesis. He says : " We have learned from 
Esaias that the members (kuTig, limbs) of those that have trans- 
gressed shall be devoured by the worm and by the unceasing 
fire, remaining ever immortal that they may be a spectacle to 
all flesh" (c. loO). This is quite as good reasoning as the simi- 
lar arguments from parallel passages, which we have already 
examined. Taken together with other facts it justifies the re- 
mark of Bunsen, speaking of the Christians of this period, that 
scarcely any one of the eminent men who might have become 

1 Life, Writings, and Opinions of Justin I\Iartyr, b. 4, c. 7. 



318 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



good scholars, UHderstood Hebrew ; none had a clear idea ol the 
laws of interpretation, and of the limits between exegesis and 
speculation, fact and idea. Thus all, more or less, fell into the 
abyss of allegorical mysticism, which is a declaration of exe- 
getical bankruptcy, with a certain amount of intellectual capital 
to be spent in making it good." ^ 

§ 8. RESULTS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH. 

Tatian^ the Syrian, regarded his master Justin as " a most won- 
derful man." But after Justin's martyrdom he was, according to 
Irenaeus, elated with pride, and ambitious to promote a peculiar 
form of doctrine. Eusebius mentions a current saying that 
he made bold to put the sayings of Paul into more elegant 
language. He was also bitterly censured as blasphemously 
asserting that Adam, sinning not ignorantly, w^as not saved. 

His doctrine of the soul appears to be a compound of the 
opinions of Justin and of the Gnostics. In his " Discourse to 
the Greeks " he says man was made " an image of immortality, 
in imitation of his Maker ; so that, as God hath imm.ortality, 
man likewise, receiving a divine portion of God, might have that 
which is immortal" (c. 10). Again: "The spirit is not pre- 
served by the soul, but itself preserves the soul. . . . For 
the Word is the divine light, and the soul without understanding 
is darkness. Wherefore if it be alone, it inclines toward mat- 
ter, and dies with the flesh. . . . The spirit of God is not 
received by all, but descending upon those who live justly, and 
embracing their soul, renders it akin to itself" (c. 22). Again: 
" The heavenly spirit, together with the soul, will attain to the 
|)utting on of immortality instead of mortality, which other souls 
did not know of" (c. 35). But he is not always consistent with 
himself. " We recognize," he says, " two kinds of spirit ; one of 
which we call the soul; but the other is nobler than the soul, — 
the image and likeness of God ; each of which was given to men 
at the first, that they might at the same time have a body, and 
'•^e masters of it" (c. 18). This spirit as a power of " immor- 



1 Hippolytus and his Age, I. 233. 



i 



RESULTS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH. 



319 



tality for the sake of punishment," he may have regarded as 
imposed upon those who did not otherwise receive it. This 
inconsequence in the reasonings of the early apologists may 
explain the opinion of a German writer, that all of them under- 
stood by the mortality of the soul simply its inferior and de- 
pendent nature, and not its actual liability to death for sin. 

Tatian is known as the leader of the sect of Encratites, whose 
ascetic views were a practical Manich^ism. His extravagances 
are doubtless due in part to a wild and fanatical temper. But 
his deprecation of marriage was, perhaps, only too consistent 
with the notion that a friend or a child might suffer for ever. 

Thd Apology of TheopMhis, addressed to Autolycus, consists 
of three books which appear to have been written at different 
times. The progress of the argument shows, we think a pro- 
,gress of doubt respecting the destiny of the lost. 

In the first book he says : " When thou shalt have put off 
mortality and put on immortality, thou wilt worthily see God. 
» For God shall raise up thy Hesh immortal, with thy soul ; then, 
having become immortal, thou wilt see Him who is immortal, if 
thou believe on him now. And then wilt thou know that thou 
hast unjustly reviled Him" (c. 7). "Whom do thou obey, if 
thou wilt, believing Him ; le^,t, disbelieving now, thou be per- 
suaded then wdien compelled by eternal punishments." Which 
punishments he claims that the poets and philosophers stole 
from the prophets, to sanction their own teachings. Evil doers 
" shall at last be held in eternal fire. Since, my friend, thou 
hast said. Show me thy God, — this is my God; and I counsel 
thee to fear Him, and to believe in Him" (c. 14). 

In the second book he cites Gen. ii. 7, with the remark : 
'• Whence the soul is called by many immortal " (c. 19 ). Man 
was placed on probation, " that, grovv'ing, and finally attaining 
perfection, and being manifest as a god"-^ he might thus ascend 
into heaven, in the jDossession of eternity. For man had been 

1 Ullmann, in the Studien nnd Kritiken, 1828, Ko. II. p. 425. His article 
is translated in the Am. Bib. Eepos., Oct, 1837. 

2 Words suggested, perhaps, by Eom. viii. 19: " The manifestation of the 
sons of God. " 



320 



THE niSTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



made intermediate ; neither absolutely mortal, nor altogether 
immortal ; but capable of either ; just as the garden where he 
was placed was, for its beauty, intermediate between earth and 
heaven" (c. 24). Death was a merciful provision ; " God be- 
stowed it as a great blessing upon the man, that he might not re- 
main for all time in sin ; but he banished the transgressor from 
paradise, as in exile, that when he should by this punishment in 
due time expiate his sin, he might be reinstated." Death is re- 
constructive : " Just as a vessel, if, when finished, it has some 
blemish, is recast and made over, so as to be new and whole, — 
death does the same for man ; for he is, after a sort, broken in 
pieces, that in the resurrection he may appear sound ; by v/hich 
I mean, pure, just, and immortal" (c. 26). In the next chapter 
he reasserts the middle nature of man, in the words before cited. 
In a single instance he speaks of the just man as escaping 
" eternal punishments," and proving " worthy of an eternal life 
from God" (c. 34). But at the close, quoting the j^oets and 
the Sybilline leaves at large, he says much of punishment and 
death, but nothing of eternal pain. 

The third book opens with a noble argument from the Chris- 
tian life and example. The doctrine of metempsychosis is called 
the reproach of this world's wisdom (c. 7) ; but scarcely a Vv^ord 
is said of man's imm.ortality or of his destiny. 

The germs of restorationism which v/e find in Theophilus are 
still more apparent in Athena gor as. We know little of his his- 
tory ; but according to Philip of Sida, he was a catechist at 
Alexandria, before Clement. 

A marked feature of his writings is the prominence he gives 
to that which is positive, in the doctrine of salvation. Man is 
saved for an infinite good. The nearest approach he makes to 
the modern doctrine of punishment is in the following passage of 
his " Embassy for the Christians : " " Knowing that when re- 
leased from this life, we sliall either live another nobler life, not 
earthly but heavenly (since we shall dwell before God and with 
God as heavenly spirits, embodied, yet not fleshly, free from all 
change and suffering of soul ) ; — or, if we share the ruin of 
others, a worse life, even in fire (for God did not create us like 



RESULTS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH. 3zl 

slieep and cattle, to serve a purpose and then perish and disap- 
pear) ; — we are not likely to give ourselves up to sin, or to pro- 
voke the displeasure of the great Judge" (c. 31 ; al. 27). He 
sometimes speaks of the soul as immortal, and he censures the 
notion that it dies with the body as licentious (c. 36). In his 
treatise on the Resurrection, he says : " This corruptible shall 
put on incorruption . . . that each one may receive the 
things done in the body, whether good or bad" (c. 18). The 
wicked will be punished in another life, because this life is too 
short for their just recompense (c. 19). But the judgment is not 
the final cause of the resurrection, for then there could be no res- 
urrection of those dying in infancy (c. 14). The resurrection is 
in general not injurious, but highly advantageous to man (c. 10). 
It is only a change of our being, and that for the better (c. 12). 
It effects a continuity of existence, and thus is just as much ac- 
cording to reason as that we should exist at all (c. 13). Man 
was created, not for the benefit of the Creator, nor of any other 
creature, but for himself ; his own life is a proper end, and there- 
fore it should not be after a while consumed and become extinct. 
Whence nothing can occur to man as a reason why he should 
cease to be (c. 12). "The multitude of those who fall away 
from the end that behoves them cannot set aside the common lot 
of mankind ; the individual must be judged for himself, and each 
man rewarded or punished by the measure of the good or evil 
acts of his life" (c. 25). 

In the system of Athenagoras the immortality of the soul is 
certainly of nature. Yf e shall find that with his successors, by 
reason of an ever free will which the Greek Fathers all main- 
tained, that which we call grace came to be regarded as man's due. 

Clement of Alexandria, like Justin, embraced Christianity as 
the result of his free, philosophical inquiries. Seeking the aid of 
various teachers, he finally took up his abode in Egypt, where 
he met with Pantsenus, an eminent but devout Gnostic, who had 
penetrated most profoundly into the spirit of Scripture. Clem- 
ent made Gnosis auxiliary to Christian doctrine, vindicating true 
philosophy as accordant with true faith; thus opposing both the 
rationalizing sceptics, and the unreasoning believers. 



322 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

Clement does not speak of the soul as immortal, perhaps be- 
cause this was a Gnostic style of expression, in which Christians 
did not yet freely indulge. In one instance he speaks of the 
soul as saved, by present grief, from " eternal death." ^ Else- 
where he defines the death of the soul as consisting in sin or 
ignorance.^ Punishment (^KoAaii^)' is the correction or amend- 
ment of the soul.^ " The chastisements of God are salutary 
and instructive, leading to amendment, and preferring the re- 
pentance of the sinner to his death ; especially as souls in their 
separate state, though darkened by evil passions, have yet a 
clearer discernment than they had whilst in the body, because 
they are no longer hindered by the fiesh."^ Amendment is 
effected by the so-called "discreet fire" {nvp (ppovifiov'), called by 
the Latin Fathers the ignis sapiens, of which he says : " Wc 
mean that the fire sanctifies, not the flesh, but the sinning 
soul; not that gross, all-devouring fire, but the fire of wis- 
dom, diffusing itself through the soul."^ To this fire, puri- 
fying the condemned, he refers the conflagration spoken of 
by the Stoics, and divers passages from Plato and from a 
philosopher of Ephesus, probably Heraclitus.® Replying to the 
objection against God's goodness fr'^m His threatenings, he says: 
"There is nothing that the Lord hates. For he can hate 
nothing, and, at the same time, will that it should exist. 
Nor does He will any thing not to exist, and yet cause it to 
exist. Nor does any thing exist, if He wills it not. If, then, 
the Word hates aught, He wills it not to be. But naught 
exists, of whose existence God is not the cause. Therefore 
God hates not any thing." 

The restorationism of Origen is well known. He regarded all 
intelligent beings as originally alike, and human souls as fallen 
from a preexistent state. All individual differences result from 
the agency of free will, which may estrange the creature from 
God, but itself abides, and may effect the repeated rise and fall 

1 Pcedag. 1. 1, c. 8, p. 89, ed. Lugd. 1616. 2 Strom. 1. 2, p. 274; 1. 3, p. 330. 
3 Strom. 1. 1, p. 257. 4 Strom. 1. 6. p. 460. 

5 Strom. 1. 7, p. 517; comp. 1. 6, p. 460. G Strom. 1. 5, p. 437. 

7 Strom, 1. 7, p. 532. 



RESULTS IN TUE EASTERN CIIURCn. 



323 



of all finite beings. It followed that no salvation is absolutely 
final, but evil is an eternal vicissitude. 

As with Clement, and afterv/ards with Archelaus, in the dispute 
with Manes, this doctrine of a general salvation was, in the sys- 
tem of Origen, partly constrained by the Gnostic objection, that 
the Demiuge was a malign being. But it was still more closely 
connected with his view of the natural immortality of the soul, 
as related to God, to which he attached great importance^ in 
his system. Confessing the doctrine to be dangerous, he states 
the doctrine of eternal punishment, or rather punishments, in a 
hypothetical way. A signal instance occurs in his " Confession 
of Faith;" the first in which the nature and destiny of the soul 
are told in extra-scriptural language. He says : " Now that the 
soul hath its own substance and life, it shall receive according to 
its merits when it departs from this world; to possess eternal 
life and blessedness, if its deeds have secured this inheritance ; 
or to be given over to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt 
of its sins shall bring it to this doom." ^ 

Hippohjtus should be here named as belonging to the Eastern 
Church, though he was Bishop of the Harbor of Rome. He 
was a disciple of Irenseus, and a friend of Origen. His language 
respecting the destiny of the wicked is too poetic to decide his 
belief, especially when compared with what he says of the 
righteous. " Unquenchable and eternal fire," he says, " awaits 
them ; and a certain fiery worm, that dies not, nor destroys the 
body, but foaming from the body in ceaseless pain, abi es." 
Again : " By this knowledge ye will escape the approaching 
threat of the fire of judgment, and the dark lightiess eye of Tar- 
tarus, never illumined by the voice of the Logos, and he ebul- 
litions of the overflowing lake of hellish fire, and the rer-fixed, 
threatening eye of the avenging angels of Tartaru , and the 
worm which winds itself without rest round the foam ng body to 
feed upon it. This thou wilt escape, having been taught to know 
the true God ; and thou wilt have an immortal body, together 
with an imperishable soul, and wilt receive the kingdom of 



1 Neander, Church Hist., I. 710. 2 J)q Principiis, Pr^f. apud. Eufinum. 



324 



THE HISTORICAL ARGU31KNT. 



heaven. Having lived on earth, and having knoAvn tlie Heavenly 
King, thou wilt be a companion of God, and a fellow heir with 
Christ, not subject to lust, or passions, or sickness. For thou 
hast become God. For whatsoever hardships thou didst suffer 
when a man, He gave them to thee because thou wast a man : 
but that which is proper to God, he has declared he will give 
thee because thou art deified, being born again an immortal."^ 

Bunsen remarks that Hippoljtus, in a similar rhetorical de- 
scription, evidently intends "to emulate the celebrated myth, 
which in the Gorgias we find placed in the mouth of Socrates, 
respecting the judgment and the state of the soul after death. 
Nor do I think that it ever entered the mind of Hippolytus to 
attribute any authority to his rhapsody. But in progress of time 
some of his phrases got into the liturgies of the Churches, and 
were then canonized by those who canonized liturgies and 
rubrics. Hippolytus dreamt of no such thing ; for the Gentile 
tales he substituted a Christian tale founded on some of the sym- 
bolical expressions in the parables and the Apocalypse, or on 
certain phrases in some apocryphal work, availing himself also 
judiciously of a beautiful line in Pindar or in Plato. Why 
should he not do so ? Was it his fault that later dark ages mis- 
understood such innocent poetry?"^ 

The opinions of the Greek Fathers now begin to form an 
almost unbroken history of restorationism. The views of Origen 
were held by Gregory Thaumaturgus (A. D. 243), who was for 
eight years his pupil, and became bishop of Neocaesarea ;^ per- 
haps by Dlonysius, bishop of Alexandria (A. D. 247), another 
pupil of Origen, to whom he inscribed his discourse on martyr- 
dom certainly by Pierius and Theognostus, distinguished teach- 
ers of the Alexandrian Church (A. D. 282) ; ^ probably by 
Methodius, bishop of Tyre (A. D. 290), at different times an 
admirer and an opponent of Origen, but the latter without cen- 
sure of his restorationist views ; ^ certainly by Pamphilus, pres- 

1 Refu'tation of the Heresies. 2 Hippolytus and his Age, I. 450, 451. 
SRufinu?, adv. HieronjTn. 1. 1, ad finem; — Neander, Church Hist. 1. 720. 
^ Lardner, Credibility, H. 685. 5 Photius, Fragments; — Neander, I. 713. 
6 Neander, Church Hist. I. 720; — Epiphanius, Panarium, Hseres. Ixiv. 



RESULTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. 



325 



hjtev of Csesarea (A. D. 294), and Eusehius (A. D. 320), who 
opposed the censures of Origen, and conjointly wrote in his de 
fence ;i by Titus of Bostra (A. D. 362) ;2 probably br Basil 
(A. D. 370);^ certainly by Didymus Alexandria;^ perhaps 
by Gregory Nazianzen ;^ certainly by Gregory Nyssen (A. D. 
TiY),^ Diodorus of Tarsus (A. D. 378),' and Theodore of Mop- 
suestia (A. P. 394) ;S probably by Synesius (A. D. 410) ;9 
certainly by Maximus (A. D. 662),^*^ and by Nemesius (A. D. 
490)11 and Nicholas of Methone (A. D. 109 6), i- who admitted 
immortality to be of grace, but supposed it to be the actual for- 
tune of all men. 

§ 9. RESULTS IX THE WESTERN CHURCH. 

The Latin Fathers, as compared with the Greek, generally 
speak less of the essential freedom of the will, and attach greater 
importance to the necessities of government, both human and 
divine. To their wa^itings, the Church doctrine of eternal suffer- 
ing is mainly due. Yet even among them, besides the manifest 
evil effects of this doctrine, we shall find such tenderness for the 
views of Origen, and occasional tendencies to them, as show that 
their own views were felt as burdensome. We shall find Giese- 
ler justified in his statement, that "the belief in the unalienable 
power of amendment in all intelligent beings, and in the limited 
duration of future punishment, w^as so general even in the West, 
and among the opponents of Origen, that it seemed entirely inde- 
pendent of his system, to which, doubtless, its origin must be 
traced." 1^ 

Tertidlian of Carthage (A. D. 200-220), was of a fierce and 

iXeander, Church Hist. I. 722. ~ Contra Mauichaos, 1. 1. 

3 Comm. m Esai. iv. 4; ix. 19. 
Jerome, adv. Eufin. 1. 3. Lardner, Credibility, IV. 301. 

5 Oratio XL. p. 665. Biimet, State of the Dead, 1728, p. 92. 

6 Orat. Catech. c. 8; De Anima et Eesur. p. 229; De Opif. HomiBis, c. 21. 
• Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc. § 142. 

sPhotius, Cod. 177, p. 396; Lai-dner, Credibility, IV. 894. 

9Ep. 44, ad Joannem. lo^eander, Church Hist., HI. 171-192 

11 De Xatura Hominis, c. 2, De Anima- 
ls Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc. § 177. 13 Eccl. Hist. Division H. § 82. 
28 



326 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

fieiy temper, and became, as we have observed, a Montanist, 
advocating and systematizing the principles which led to the 
doctrine of celibacy and of penan-ce.-*^ He was the first, so far as 
we know, v.'ho expressly affirmed, and argued, that the torments 
of the lost would be co-eternal with the happiness of the saved. 
His doctrine of eternal punishment is the obverse side of the 
notion of the ignis sapiens, before noted. He says : " The phi- 
losophers know the difference between secret and common fire. 
That which serves for the use of man is of quite another nature 
from that w^hich ministers to the justice of God, whether it hurls 
thunderbolts from heaven, or belches forth from the volcano ; for 
it burns without consuming, and repairs what it preys upon. 
The mountains remain, though ever-burning; the man who is 
struck by lightning is not reduced to ashes by the fire. Here is 
a witness of the eternal fire, an emblem of judgment perpetually 
feeding its penalty. The mountains burn and endure ; why not 
guilty men, the enemies of God ? " ^ 

Another passage shows an apparent relish of the doctrine : 
" You are fond," he says, " of your spectacles. But there are 
other spectacles ; that day which is disbelieved, derided by the 
nations, the last and eternal day of judgment when all ages shall 
be swallowed up in one conflagration — what a variety of specta- 
cles shall then appear ! How shall I admire, how laugh, how 
rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many kings, and false gods 
in heaven, together with Jove himself, groaning in the lowest 
abyss of darkness ! so many magistrates who persecuted the 
name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever 
kindled against Christians ; so many sage philosophers blushing 
in raging fire, with their scholars whom they persuaded to des- 
pise God, and to disbelieve the resurrection ; and so many poets 
shuddering before the tribunal, not of Rhadamanthus, not of 
Minos, but of the disbelieved Christ ! Then shall we hear the 
tragedians more tuneful, in the expression of their own sufferings; 
then shall we see the dancers more sprightly, amidst the flames ; 



1 Neander, Clmrcli Hist. I. 518-522. 

2 Apology, c. 48; comp. Scorpiace, c. 3. 



RESULTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. 



327 



the charioteer all recl-hot in his burning car ; and the wrestlers 
hurled, not upon the accustomed list, but upon a plain of fire." 

IMilman confesses " it would be wiser for Christianity, retreat- 
ing upon its genuine records in the New Testament, to disclaim 
this fierce African, than to identify itself with his furious invec- 
tives, by unsatisfactory apologies for their unchristian fanati- 
cism." ^ But the best apology may be found in his own more 
hopeful views, when he says : 

" Yet there is in the soul that original good, divine and genu- 
ine, and which is properly natural to it. For what comes from 
God is not so much extinguished, as obscured. . . . There 
are some very bad and some very good, and nevertheless all 
have one kind of soul; hence in the worst there is something 
good, and in the best, something bad. . . . Accordingly, 
when the soul has come to the faith, regenerate in a second birth 
by water and heavenly grace, the veil of its former corruption is 
withdrawn, and it sees its own light clearly."^ Which seems to 
warrant Neander's remark that " he regards Hades as the com- 
mon intermediate state, where there is a presentiment of happi- 
ness and of punishment, and whence every person according to the 
measure of his purification from all sin, will be raised, earlier or 
later, to a participation in the millennial glory. Every sin, even 
the least, must be atoned for by a delay of the resurrection ; and 
from this tenet afterwards arose the idea of a purifying punish- 
ment, an ignis expurgatoris" ^ 

This is the brighter side of the ignis sapiens. The darker 
side was offered again by Minucius Felix (A. D. 210), in an 
Apology, addressed to a heathen friend, Octavius, probably soon 
after his own conversion. He illustrates the nature of the fire 
in the same way as Tertullian, and adds a theodicy: "Xone 
but a profane man doubts that they are deservedly tormented as 
impious and unjust, who know not God ; since to ignore the 
Parent and Lord of all is no less wicked than to injure Him."^ 

1 De Spectaculis, c. 30. " Gibbon's Decline, and Fall, c. 15, note 72. 
s De Anima, c. 41; comp. c. 35: " Te in carcereni mandet infemum, unde 
non dimittaris, nisi raodico quoque delicto mora resurrectionis expeuso.'" 
4 Antignosticiis, Part III. \ 2, p. 470, Bohn's ed. ° c. 35. 



328 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



Oyprian, tlie successor and devoted admirer of Tertiillian, 
whom he called " the master," was martyred A. D. 250. The 
following passage shows the temper of the man : " Gehenna, 
ever burning, will prey upon the damned, a devouring punish- 
ment of burning flames, torments that can have no respite 
or end. Their souls will be preserved with their bodies for 
the pain of endless tortures. Then shall he who made a 
brief spectacle of us be himself a spectacle for ever, and the 
transitory joy of cruel eyes in our persecutions shall be repaid 
with a perpetual vision, according to the Holy Scripture which 
saith : ' Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not 
be c|uenched; and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh.'" ^ 
He intimates no restoration, but the doctrines of penance^ and of 
purgatory^ are apparent in his writings. 

In Cyprian's time, and mainly by his influence, the ecclesias- 
tical system was developed. The Church with her ordinances 
was the organ of Christ's salvation. Her baptism and her 
communion were the keys by which heaven was opened and shut 
again. It was natural that the Church should be crowded by 
multitudes seeking to escape from endless woe, yet more willing 
to escape by penance and ceremony than by obedience and 
love. But such could not endure tribulation ; and reviving 
persecution created a new class of men, the Traditores, who 
denied their faith and gave up the sacred writings at the 
bidding of t!ie magistrate. And when the storm was past, 
they fled to the Church again. Should they be rejected, as 
apostates? But how then could they be saved from the uncon- 
sum.ing flam.es? A kind bishop must admit them. Corruption 
grew apace, and reform was needed. 

The reformer came, — Novatian, a Roman presbyter, of ex- 
tensive learning, of blameless life, and whose doctrinal soundness 
is acknowledged by all save those interested in denying him the 
honor of martyrdom. He was heretical only because he dis- 
turbed the order of the churches that needed renovation, and 
because Cathari, or Puritans, were multiplying. He refused 



1 Ep. ad Demetriaiium, c. 24 (21); comp.Ep. 58 (56), ad Thibar. c. 10 (8). 

2 De Opere et Eleemos. 3 Ep. 55 (52), ad Anton, c. 17 (13). 



RESULTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. 



329 



the grace of God to those who had forsaken and denied it. 
This explains the epithets freely bestowed upon him, " deserter 
of the Church, enemy of mercy, slayer of penitence, teacher 
of pride, corrupter of truth, destroyer of charity," and worse 
names, from Cyprian ^ and others less mild. 

The courage of JSTovatian may be explained in either of two 
ways. He perhaps thought the faithless " confesssor," the re- 
turning traditor, might be saved without the Church. But very 
probably he feared endless woe for no man. A letter to Cyprian 
is ascribed to him which speaks of eternal punishments (seterna 
supplicia) ; he, however, was not likely to address that prelate 
as a " most blessed and glorious Father " (beatissime ac . glorio- 
sissime Papa). The " Rule of Faith" which has come down 
to us as his work is probably genuine, doubtless as severe 
as his own views. This contains no explicit statement of the 
destiny of the lost, though that subject is touched occasionally. 
Its prevalent tone is that of the writings of Athenagoras. In 
one instance the soul is called immortal, wdth a citation of 
the first clause of Matt. x. 28 (c. 25). Remarking that man 
cannot kill the soul, the writer says : " The power of death 
is broken when the author of immortality intervenes" (cc. 15, 25). 
He calls the Paradise of Adam the world of eternal life, 
to which the faithful shall be restored by the Spirit working 
in them "for [their] eternity, and unto the resurrection of 
immortality, allying them wdth His own eternal divinity" (c. 29). 
He defines immortality as "not seeing death," and as closely 
allied with divinity, inferring the divinity of Christ from his 
bestowing immortality on men (c. 15). He speaks of a dis- 
solution of all things, that a greater world may be given us 
(c. 2). He cites Rom. xi. 36, with the remark that in the 
j idgment all things fall back, as it were, unto God (c. 3). 
God's anger is for the good of men, that by His threatenlngs 
tliL-y may be recalled to virtue (c. 5). Fallen man was 
driven from the tree of life, "not from God's ill v/ill, but 
lest, living for ever without forgiveness through Christ, he 

1 Ep. 60, c. 3; comp. Ep. 52, c. 2. 
28* 



330 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



should continue in immortal sin, unto punishment" (c. 1). The 
world hastens t-o the day of judgment by fire (c. 8) ; and those 
who blaspheme have no forgiveness, either in this world, or in 
that which is to come (c. 29). 

Yi e have another treatise ascribed to Novatian, on " Jewish ( 
Meats." It contains no allusion to human destiny ; but its ' 
subject may indicate an acquaintance with Jewish doctrine, 
of which presently. 

The citations heretofore made from Lactantius (A. D. 306), 
suffice to show the doctrinal relations in which he held the 
eternity of evil, and the inconsistencies of his great genius. 

Ambrose of Milan (A. D. 374) held the doctrine of his day 
without question, though in milder spirit than Tertullian or 
Cyprian. "We shall have but a word to say of him, in relation 
to the principles of toleration and their subversion in his time. 

The doctrinal questions created by the notion of eternal suf- 
fering all appeared in the Augustinian and Pelagian controversy, 
which the Church still inherits. The difference between Augus- 
tine and Pelagius is most manifest, we think, in the question of 
a crisis in man's history. Augustine affirms that bodily death 
is of sin ; but eternal death is hopeless misery. The freedom of 
will, which on his conversion he had ably defended against the 
Manichagans, is now asserted with qualifications. " Free will 
is indeed as much free will after sins as it was before sins : " ^ 
but it is only a constitutional freedom, which sin has deranged. 
The sinner retains only a freedom to sin. In this fatal liberty 
consists, in part, his punishment. " By the greatness of the first 
sin we have lost the free will to love God." ^ 

Failing to complete this theodicy by any formula of infinite 
guilt, Augustine sought a general relief in exalted views 
of the Divine Sovereignty, to which the reaction of his mind 
from Manichaeism was most favorable. Then he plants the 
divine justice deeper than the depths, and resorts to mystery. 
Pressed by his opponents, he excuses the case of man's con- 

1 Julian, 0pp. Imp. I. 91; Wiggers, August, and Pelag. c. 7. 

2 Ep. 217, c. 5; De Civ. Dei, 1. 14. cc. 12, 15; 1. 21. cc. 11, 12. 



RESULTS ON THE WESTERN CHURCH. 



331 



demnation by citing Paiii's words respecting a great salvation : 
« O the depths ! " (Rom. xi. 33.) 

Pelagius on the other hand asserts the natural death of the 
body, and that man's resurrection is not in consequence of 
Christ's resurrection. ^ But while we are not involved in 
Adam's sin, the free individual is exposed, by his actual sin, to 
eternal death. In this view he pressed the doctrine of eternal 
punishment even more rigorously than his opponent. 

But each party was embarrassed v/ith the case of infants. 
Julian thus addresses Augustine : " Here, most holy priest and 
most learned orator, thou fabricatest something more mournful 
and frightful than the brimstone in the valley of Amsanctus, or 
the pit of Avernus. God himself, you say, who commendeth 
his love towards us, who even spared not His own Son, but hath 
given him up for us all. He so determines ; He is himself the 
persecutor of those that are born ; He himself consigns to eter- 
nal fire, for an evil will, the children who, as he knows, can have 
had neither a good nor an evil will." ^ To which he replies : 
" We may justly conclude that infants dying without baptism will 
be in the mildest punishment." Yet " there is no middle place, 
so that he who is not with Christ, must be with the devil." ^ 
But Pelagius could only say : " Where they do 7iof go, I know ; 
but where they go, I know not." * 

By an expedient of the Church which settled a long contro- 
versy, infants were saved from original sin by the earliest possi- 
ble baptism ; and adults were saved from sin committed after 
baptism, otherwise unpardonable, by extreme unction. But 
what should be done for unbelievers ? Plere was the almost 
resistless temptation to the employment of force for the salva- 
tion of souls. Every earnest man that had a heart must fall 
before it ; and such a man was Augustine. The precedents 
cited, and the comparisons made, in his letter to Boniface on the 
correction of the Donatists, are an explicit justification of the 
exercise of civil power for the restraint and extirpation of her- 
esy and the saving of those who err. He deprecated extreme 



1 Wiggers, August, and Pelag. c. 3. 2 Opp. Imp. 1. 1, c. 48. See Wiggers, ib. c. 4. 
8De Fee. Mer. 1. 1, c. 28. 4 De Pec. Orig. c 21. 



332 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



measures, and seems to have hesitated ; but he Avas persuaded by 
the apparent success of the secular argument. ^ 

This state of things and other facts which we will add, war- 
rant the strong words of a cautious writer : " The regeneration 
of the Church was in that age hypothetically possible, and was 
actually attempted ; yet it utterly failed. The men whose intel- 1 
ligence and expansion of mind should have taught them to listen j 
to reproof, and who should have entertained — if it had been but 
for a moment — the suspicion that the course of things might 
be unsafe, these, with a headlong intemperance, rushed upon the 
objectors and triumphed. Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, the 
three illustrious leaders of the age, joined their giant strength 
and gave to the Church the plunge that sent it down to the 
abyss. Whatever of degrading superstition, whatever of san- 
guinary fanaticism, whatever folly, whatever corruption, what- 
ever cruelty, belonged to the religious condition of Europe under 
the sway of Hildebrand, may be assigned (as a true consequence) 
to the part taken and the course pursued by the great men we 
have named: — the fate of mankind through a long night of 
ignorance and malign tyranny was sealed when Ambrose, Augus- 
tine and Jerome combined to crush dissent." ^ 

When the terror of an infinite evil was divorced from a warm 
feeling of humanity, it led at once to the celibacy and other 
forms of sour asceticism which already prevailed. When it was 
connected with a zeal for the honor of the Church and its de- 
fence against the heathen religions, it engendered the most viru- 
lent fanaticism. And to parties within the Church it could only 
give a rancorous fierceness. Some of these effects have been 
vividly yet fairly portrayed by the author of " Hypatia." The 
female philosopher of this name, it is well known, owed a violent 
death to the rage of a Christian mob instigated by Cyril. The 
effect last named is illustrated in an election for the bishopric of 
Rome in the middle of the fourth century, when 127 corpses of 

1 Epistolse 185 (al. 50), 158-160, 164, 166, 167, 204. Compare Fleuiy, Hist. 
Eccl. 1. 461 ; — Bayle, Commentaire Philosophique sur les paroles de notre Seig- 
neur, Luc. xiv. 2-3; — Miliier, Eccl. Hist., cent. 5, c. 6. 

■■2 1 Taylor, Nat. Hist, of Fanaticism; Of the Symbol. 



I RESULTS ON THE WESTERN CHURCH. 333 

Christians were found killed by the opposite party near a Ba- 
I silica.-^ That the principles of persecution are strictly due to 
the terrible doctrine in question, is confessed by the abettors oi 
i the Inquisition, of whom we are told : Certain it is, that the 
! Court of Inquisition, as established in many countries, as far as it 
I differs from civil courts of judicature, is declared, by the authors 
:! and maintainers of it, to be the nearest imitation of the Divine 
Tribunal; and it is avowedly founded upon and justified by the 
i doctrines of reprobation and of eternal torments." ^ And Burnet 
I tells us what was the plea of the bloody Queen Mary : " As the 
souls of heretics are to be hereafter eternally burning in hell, 
there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the 
I divine vengeance by burning them on earth." 
I Jerome (A. D. 392), the author of the Latin Yulgate trans- 
lation of the Bible, was perhaps the most learned of the Fathers. 
In his controversy with Rufinus he strenuously opposes the er- 
ror of Origen, and he advances the Tertullian doctrine of the 
' ignis sapiens.^ But he allows the expression that " before G6d 
no rational creature can perish perpetually ; " ^ the sense of 
which is doubtful. And in his commentary on Isa. Ixvi. 24, he 
says : "Those who believe that punishments will at some time 
come to an end, and, though they be long continued, the torments 
still have their period, employ these proofs (viz. Rom. xi. 25 ; 
Gah iii. 23 ; Mic. vii. 9 ; Wisd. xii. 1 ; Ps. xxx. 20). Which 
passages they adduce, asserting that after torment there will be 
rest ; which is to be concealed from the knowledge of those to 
whom fear is useful, that in dread of punishments they may 
j cease from sin. Which we ought to leave to the knowledge of 
God alone, who employs not only mercies but torments, and 
I knows whom, how, and how long He ought to judge. Let us 
! then say, as becomes our human frailty : 'Lord, rebuke me not 
I in thine anger, nor chasten me in thy wrath.' And as we be- 
lieve that the torments of the devil and of all the infidels and 
impious who say in their heart, ' There is no God,' are eternal, 

i 1 Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age, Pref . p. Ivii. 

I 2 Goadby's Bible, App. p. 1005. 3 in Dan. c. 3. 

' e Ad Gal. 5, 22 ; comp. ad Eph. 4, 16. 

I 



334 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



SO they think that the Judge gives sentence with mercy upon 
the sinful and impious as well as Christians, whose works are 
to be tried and purged by fire." And on Isa. xxiv. 22, 23, he 
says : " We must know that human frailty can not penetrate the 
judgments of God, nor conjecture concerning the greatness and 
measure of His punishments, which are left to the will of the I.ord." 

The extent of the doubt of which Jerome speaks is apparent 
from the words of Augustine : " In vain do some, yea, very many 
(immo quam plurimi), pity with human sympathy the eter- 
nal punishment of the damned, and their perpetual unremitting 
torments, and believe it will not so be ; not indeed denying the 
Scriptures, but, by some method of their own, modifying the se- 
verer declarations to a milder sentiment, taking them as uttered 
more for effect than for exact truth. For, say they, God will 
not forget to be compassionate, nor in his wrath restrain his mer- 
cies." ^ For which doubts he seems to have a tender respect 
when he says : " Now with our compassionate friends we must 
debate the case and dispute peacefully." ^ The doctrine of eter- 
nal suffering was, however, retained by the Church, subject to 
very important modifications in its application. Church ordi- 
nances, as devices for salvation from infinite evil, were multi- 
plied. The terrors of final ruin would be naturally portrayed 
in the most vivid colors, as if the flames of hell, burning more 
fiercely, should find fewer victims. Yet, for the most of those 
dying unfitted for eternal life, they were softened into a fire of 
purgation and a harsh method of salvation. Thus between the 
two sides of the fire eternal its terrors almost vanished. The 
sentiment of a hymn that belongs to the fourth century became 
the sentiment of a supposed age of severe doctrine : 

" The avenging Judge his Avrath restrains, 
The penitent receives ; 
Of the ungodly he but few 
To death eternal leaves." ^ 

1 Enchirid. ad Laurent, c. 112. 2 De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, c. 17. 

3 " Idem tamen benignus 
Ultor retundit iram, 
Paucosque non piorum 

Patitur perire in jevum." — Prudentius, Hymn, aute Somnum. 



JEWISH AND MEDIEVAL DOCTRINE. 



835 



§ 10. JEWISH AND MEDIiEVAL DOCTRINE. 

We liave, in a former argument, and for argument's sake, 
: granted that the Pharisees held the immortality of all, and the 
eternal misery of the lost. But this supposition rests entirely 
on the testimony of Josephus, and his testimony we have seen 
I questioned. " Some of the learned," says the writer before 
^' cited, "have remarked that he has even expressed himself in 
such a manner as might lead his readers to imagine that the 
Pharisees believed rather a transmigration, than a proper resur- 
rection." And he speaks of " that solicitude of his to make his 
representation of the opinions and practices of that nation, in 
those writings that were designed for the perusal of the unbe- 
lieving Gentiles, as little exceptionable to them as possible, 
which appears in various instances, and has been particularly 
remarked by the curious."^ Pocock, on the same subject, says : 
" If wc have not cited Josephus, it is no wonder ; since in giv- 
ing the views of the sects he names respecting the other world, 
he seems to have used words better suited to the fashions and the 
ears of the Greeks and Romans, than such as a scholar of the 
J ewish law would understand, or deem expressive of his meaning." ^ 
Another writer observes : " It must be owned that in his ac- 
count of the Scripture times, he has taken a bold liberty to vary 
from the Bible, to add, alter, retrench, and even sometimes con- 
tradict it ; which is a fault for which no other apology can be 
made but that he was of the sect of the Pharisees and gave too 
much credit to their trifling traditions." The same writer shows 
that the whole account given by Josephus of the visit of Alex- 
ander to Jerusalem (Antiq. 1. 11, c. 8, § 5) is unquestionably 
fabulous ; and is at a loss to determine whether he was him- 
self the author of the story, or was imposed upon in taking 
it as a tradition or a narration of some other Jewish writer.^ 

1 Hanner, Jewish Doc. of Eesur. 2 XotjE Misc. in Povtam ]\Iosis, c. 6. 

s Moyle, Corresp. with Prideaux, Works, II. 26 sq. Compare Norton, Genu- 
ineness of the Gospels, Vol. II. Notes, p. xcvii., where another account of Jose- 
phus (Wars, b. 6, c. 9) is shown to involve insuperable difficulties, and it is re- 
marked: "Josephus is not a writer to be trusted in any questionable case." 
See also the article in Kitto's Journal of Sac. Lit., VI. 292, occasioned by 
Traill's translation of the " Jewish Wars," and Cyc. Bib. Lit., II. 610. 



336 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



And a commentator on the passage of Nemesius before cited, 
quoting the opinion that death in a good old age is of nature 
(Antiq. 1. 1, c. 2, § 20), says: " But Josephus Avas preeminently 
inclined to accommodate his accounts to the understanding of 
the Gentiles." ^ And Bretschneider : " His extant writings 
. . . would be more valuable if he had separated their views 
from the modifications which he has seen fit to give them, out of 
respect to the Grecian readers for whom he wrote." ^ The lan- 
guage of a late authoress is perhaps too expressive of indignant 
feeling, when, with respect to the personal history of Josephus, 
she bestows such epithets as " traitor," " apostate," " groveling 
sycophant," "fulsome flatterer," "sordid, craven tool of the pa- 
gan foe," " whose book is a glaring monument of his own per- 
fidious infamy and falsehood." ® Yet his conduct during the ter- 
rible siege of Jerusalem justifies the severest censure. And the 
doctrine of the soul which appears in his writings is so Platonic 
that we could not expect him to do honor even to the Jewish 
doctrine of a resurrection. To the passage already cited, in 
which he speaks of the soul as " a portion of the divinity that 
inhabits our bodies," we may add that in which he makes Titus 
say: " those souls which are severed from their fleshy bodies in 
battles by the sword, are received by the ether, that purest of 
elements, and joined to that company which are placed among 
the stars; they become good daemons and propitious heroes, and 
show themselves as such to their posterity afterward." * 

We should here state that the " Discourse concerning Hades," 
which commonly figures as a fragment from Josephus, and hence 
is often taken for a picture of Jewish opinion in Christ's time, 
was written near the beginning of the third century, by Hip- 
polytus. See the remarks of Bunsen upon it, cited above, p. 324. 

Dismissing Josephus as an unreliable witness, we should take 
the brief testimony of Tacitus, whose veracity is unimpeached. 
He tells us that among the Jews " infanticide is a crime, and 
the souls of those dying in battle or by torture are eternal; 
hence a love of offspring, and contempt of death." A certain 

1 C. F. Matthsei, Nemesius, De Nat. Horn., Halse, 1802. 

2 Evang. Pietisnius, § 6. 3 Charlotte Elizabeth, Judasa Capta. 

4 Wars, b. 6, c. 1, § 4. For other criticisms on Josephus see our " Christ our 
Life," p. 154; and, " Tlie Ricli Man and Lazarus," pp. 22, 23 



^ JEWISH AND MEDIAEVAL DOCTRINE. 337 

I 

resemblance between this passage and that just cited gives some 
support to the opinion that Tacitus derived his history of the 
Jews from Josephus. Be that as it may, and be the errors of 
I Tacitus however great, his honesty is unquestioned ; and the 
i language in this passage is peculiar in that it clearly denotes the 
immortality of a class. Hence one of his editors has remarked 
the fact that " certain Jews have supposed that the souls of the 
ungodly are utterly cut off, and perish like the brutes ; to which, 
perhaps, Tacitus alludes." ^ And the learned Selden has ad- 
duced the same passage in his account of the Hebrew legislation 
where he gives a full account of the same doctrine.^ 
i But since Josephus can not, and Tacitus will not, prove the 
i . doctrine of eternal suffering to be a Jewish tenet, to be sanc- 
tioned by the silence of the Great Teacher, we should cer- 
I tainly expect to find it fully taught, if any where by the Jews, 
I in the Talmud. This body of Jewish tradition consists of a 
j Mishna, upon which there are two forms of Gemara, or com- 
! mentary; whence the distinction of the Jerusalem and the 
Babylonian Talmud, the first written about A. D. 300, the 
I second about A. D. 500. In the Mishna we find no mention 
, whatever of the immortality of the soul, or of eternal pain ; 
{ though exclusion from the w^orld to come, and from eternal life, 
i is frequently named. That such an one is " worthy of the world 
; to come," is a common phrase.* In the Gemara the destiny of 
i the wicked is described most fully and clearly as follows : 
" Those who sin and rebel greatly in Israel, as well as Gentile 
sinners, shall descend into gehenna, and there be judged during 
twelve months ; at the end of which the body is consumed, the 
soul is burned up, and the spirit is scattered beneath the feet of 
the just, as it is said in Mai. iv. 3. But heretics, and informers, 
and traitors, and Epicureans (infidels), who deny the law of 
God and the resurrection of the dead and depart from the way 
of the congregation, and those who terrify, and those who sin 
and cause others to sin, as Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his 

1 Rupert], note on the Hist. 1. 5, c. 5. 2 De Jure Nat. et Gent. 1. 7, c. 0. 

2 See Schoettgen, Horse Heb. et Talmud, ad Luc. xx. 35. 

29 



338 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



companions, — they shall descend into gehenna, and there be 
judged for ages of ages. Of these speaks Esaias, Ixvi. 24." ^ 

Here an unlimited suffering is named, not as the rule of j 
judgment upon the wicked, but as the exception which confirms I 
another rule. And the exception is not repeated. But the rule 
is famous, as appears from the following passage : " There are 
five things of which the period is twelve months ; — the judgment 
of those destroyed in the deluge ; the judgment of the ^Egyptians ; 
the judgment of Job ; the judgment of Gog and Magog ; and 
the judgment of the wicked in gehenna ; as it is said, Esai. Ixvi. 
23." 2 

The eternity of hell is expressly denied as follows : " Rabbi 
Simon ben Lakish has said, There will be in the future no 
gehenna, but the holy, blessed God will bring out the sun from 
its tabernacle, and will punish the ungodly therewith, but 
sanctify the righteous. As it is written in Mai. iv. 1 : For 
behold the day cometh which shall burn as an oven ; and all 
the proud, together with all that do wickedly, shall be as 
stubble, and the coming day shall burn them up;" etc.^ 

There are two or three Talmudic passages that will allow the 
modern doctrine of future punishm.ent, though they do not 
demand it. Thus it is said : " Thy justice is as the mountains 
of the Lord. How are these mountains described? They have 
no end; and so likewise the reward of the just in the time to 
come has no end. Thy judgments are avast abyss. How is 
that abyss described ? It is unsearchable ; and so likewise the 
punishments of the wicked in the time to come are unsearch- 
able."^ And the words of R. Johanan, before cited : "If He 
be angry with me, His wrath is eternal ; if He bind me. His 
bands are eternal ; if He slay me, His slaying is eternal ; and I 
cannot appease Him with words, nor assuage Him with a 
gift. Moreover there are two ways before me, and 1 know not 
which way they will lead me." ^ But those passages prove no 

1 Kosh Hashana, f. 17. 1. 2 Edaioth, c. 11. § ult. 

8 Avoda Sara, ft". 3. 2 ; 4. 1. See Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, II. 367. 
4 Tanchuma, f. 54. 2, in Ps. xxxvi. 7, cited by Sclioettgen, in Matt, xxv, 46- 
s Bab. Talm. Berachoth, f. 28, 2. 



JEWISH AND MEDIEVAL DOCTPtlNE. 



339 



immortality of the soul when compared with the numerous 
passages in which gehenna appears as a gradually devoui-ing 
but finally consuming fire. 

There are in the Talmud traces of restorationism, though 
mainly in behalf of the Israelites. Thus in the passage before 
cited : " The fire of gehenna does not prevail against the sinners 
of Israel so as to consume them." And again: "The house 
of Shammai said, There are three classes in the day of judg- 
ment, — the perfectly just, the perfectly wicked, and the inter- 
mediate. Those of the first class are written in the book of 
life ; and those of the second class are inscribed and sealed 
to gehenna ; according to Dan. xii. 2. The intermediate de- 
scend into gehenna, and cry out, and afterwards ascend according 
to Zech. xiii. 9."^ 

We find no indication that the eternity of hell-torments was 
ever an accepted Jewish doctrine ; though by individual Rabbles 
it was asserted, with infinite puerilities. Nothing of the kind 
! appears among the so-called fundamental articles of the Jewish 
faith ; nor in the catechism or liturgy of the modern Jews ; 
while the resurrection of the dead is named continually : 
" Blessed be the Lord our God, who raiseth up the dead." And 
in the accounts that we have of the sense attached by various 
Rabbles to the Chereth, or excision, of the O. T., of seven 
different opinions there is but one that seems to contemplate an 
eternal sorrow ; upon which Abarbanel, who professes it, com- 
ments feebly, thus : It is excision not of body only, but " of the 
soul, because in the world of souls it is far removed from the 
glory of the Divine Majesty." lie then compares it to the 
branch of a tree, receiving therefrom nutriment and life," and 
adds : " But this is not a mere privation of the soul, or total 
destruction ; for it is a spiritual substance, self-subsistent, and 
by nature incorruptible. But excision is punishment and great 
pain of soul," which may be greater or less. And after punish- 
ment, it receives also pleasure and delight ; as it is said. For 
there is hope of a tree," etc. (Job. xiv. 7).-^ 

1 Eosh Hashana, f. 14. 2. See Pocock, Notse in Portam Mosis, c. 6. 

2 Comm. in Legem, in Num. xv. 30. Vide Ugolini Thesaur. XXX. 176, 177 



340 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



From this account it may appear a fair question whcLlier tlie 
famous persecution of 3Iaimonides, in the twelfth century, grew 
so much out of his doctrine of annihilation, as out of his seeming 
denial, or disregard, of the twelve months' torment before anni- 
hilation. He was born at Cordova, A. D. 1131. lie is com- 
monly styled the " Eagle of the Doctors," and his first name, 
added to his fame, has given rise to the saying, " From Moses to 
Moses thei'e was none such as Moses." An eminent scholar has 
remarked that the same might be said of him which was said by 
Pliny of Diodorus Siculus, that " he v/as the first of all his 
tribe who ceased to be a trifier." He was skilled in all lan- 
guages, master of all branches of philosophy and science. His 
active life was spent in Egypt, where he died, A. D. 1205, and 
was buried in Upper Galilee, Jews and Egyptians bewailing his 
death for three whole days, with a grievous lamentation, knoAvn 
as the " Lamentum Lamentabile." 

His great work, which excited the most general opposition, 
was the More Nevochim. This was denounced as rationalistic 
by the traditionalists of his day, Avho held that the precepts of 
the Law had no foundation in reason, but were of purely arbi- 
trary authority. To offer a reason for any command of God, 
seemed to them an impertinent and impious confusion of things 
sacred and profane. The opposition was most violent in France 
and in some parts of Spain, where it was scarcely repressed by 
the influence of an eminent Babbi, David Kimchi. Gentle meth- 
ods could not save him to the Jewish Church. His enemies, 
" those seditious men who could be reached neither by argument 
nor by considerations of mildness and humanity, were silenced by 
the thunder of anathema and excommunication." ^ 

But, for the special opinion we have named, we are told that 
" all the synagogues of Gaul interdicted against him the sacred 
rites, on the ground that he opposed the authority of the Talmud 
in which the wicked are said to be tormented in the fire of 
gehenna during twelve months. Whereupon R. Nachmanides, 
a friend of his, addressed to the rulers of the synagogues a long 

1 Clavering, Diss. De Maimon. ; Ugolini Thesaur. VIII. 718. 



JEWISH AND MEDIJELVAL DOCTRINE. 



341 



letter, in a style of elegant propriety, in Avhich, after speaking 
modestly and humbly of himself and highly complimenting the 
piety and learning of the Gallic Rabbies, he very ably vindi- 
cates Maimonides from the charge of heresy, and interprets his 
opinion in the sense that he who suffers the punishment of 
excision is reduced by the fire of gehenna, after twelve months' 
torment, to perish at last into nothingness." ^ 

Maimonides was of course charged with denying the immor- 
tality of the soul, though he constantly speaks of the righteous 
as living for ever. was defended against the charge long 
after, by R. Menasseh ben Israel. ^ 

With some difference in minor points, the general view of 
Maimonides respecting the final punishment of excision is as- 
serted by the following Rabbies : xsachmanides, who names 
three particulars, and calls the third excision still more severe, 
by which the body is cut off in this life, and the soul in the life 
to come ; " ^ R. Bechai ; * D. Kimchi, who agreed with him 
fully,^ and is pronounced, by J. Pye Smith, one of the best 
Jewish interpreters ; Jehuda bar Elai ; ^ Solomon Jarchi ; ' 
Joseph Albo ; ^ Menasseh ben Israel ; * perhaps also by R. 
Gershom (A. D. 1290). i° 

1 De Veil, ^laimon. de Sacrif., c. 1, note. The letter is extant, ?ay5 De V. 
in a volume of Miscellanies edited by E. Joseph del Medico, along -^vith two 
treatises entitled, " Decidua Sapientia?," and " Abscondita SapientijB." And 
he adds that ''since Clitrttli appears in the Scriptures and is regarded by all as 
a punishment not human but divine, I have thought best to render it by the 
Latin word txitlum; as in Cicero (De Leg. 1. 2): The human penalty of perjury 
is dedecus ; the divine, exitium.''^ Compare Selden, as above 

2 Buxtorf, Vita Maimon. Ugol, Thesaur. VIII. 696. 

* Comm. in Legem; comp. Lex Adami; Porta Eetributionis. 

* Buxtorf, S}mag. Jud. c. 3. 

6 Comm. in 1 Sam. xxv. 29; Ps. i. 5; civ. 29; cxv. 5; Isa. xxvi. 19. Rhen- 
ferd, Vindic. Sent, de Sec. Fut., ^Meuschen. X. T. fx Talm. illustr., p. 1160. 

<5 § Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, Theil 11. p. 368. 

7 Comm. in Gen. xvii. 14: Hos. xiii. 1. Pocock, Xotas in Portam Mosis, c. 6. 

8 Ikkarim, 1. 4, c. 34; — Pocock, as above. 

9 De Eesur. 1. 2, cc. 8, 12; I. 3, c. 1; De Anima, c. 8, " ait Israelitarum qui in 
corpore peccarint et corpus et animum comburi." — Grotius, in Matt. x. 28; 
— AYirsius, De Mundo hoc et fut. §§9, 14: — Pocock as above. 

J 10 " Omnes poenje non extenninantes sunt medicinales." See Hammond, 
I Serm. on Jer. xxxi. 18. 

We are happv to acknowledge here our obligations to the Eev. 1. Maver 
'29^ 



342 



THE IIISTOIIICAL ARGUMENT. 



It is a common remark with Maimonides and other Rabbles, 
that extermination is the greatest of all punishments. Which 
view is carried so far by Ebn Latiph, that, referring to a dis- 
tinction of the wicked as the Community of Fools, who sin with- 
out knowing better, and the Community of Evil-doers, who have 
the sense to know that they sin, — he says that the spirits of the 
former shall not survive the twelve months' torment, which is 
" perfected punishment, and excision absolute, and perdition and 
corruption, which is never reversed, and is the greatest among 
all punishments;" but the latter are only punished by a great 
evil seizing the soul, their sorrow aggravated by the company 
of like souls, and all their woes to be eternal.^ Upon which we 
will not insist; but aside from so bold an opinion, the history we 
have given justifies the argument of Dr. Bentley, when he says ; 

0 dismal reward of Infidelity ! at which nature does shrink and 
shiver with horror. What some of the learnedest Doctors 
among the Jews have esteemed the most dreadful of all punish- 
ments, and have assigned for the portion of the blackest crim- 
inals of the damned, — so interpreting Tophet, Abaddon, the 
Valley of Slaughter, and the like, for final extinction and depriv- 
ation of being, — this Atheism exhibits to us an equivalent to 
heaven."^ 

If we would study the philosophy of persecution, we have a 
suggestive chapter in the experience of Averoes, the Arabian 
philosopher, sometimes called " the omniscient." Whether the 
followers of Mahomet had more set their hearts on their eternal 
Paradise of fond delights, or on the endless torment of the wicked, 
on which the Koran dilates so largely, — as their cousins, the 
Jews, would maintain the twelve months' agony, — it is certain 
that Averoes' doubts of a proper immortality created a panic. 
He was celebrated for his personal virtues. He ate but once a 
day, of the plainest food, and he often passed whole nights in 

Ph. D., now of Rochester, author of a Hebrew Grammar, for valuable assis- 
rance in our account of Jewish opinions. For some of these the reader may 
be referred to an English translation of portions of the Yad Hachazakah of 
Maimonides, and to J. Allen's " Modern Judaism," 

1 Pocock, as above, 2 Confutation of Atheism, Serm. I. Boyle Lecture. 



1 

I 



JEWISH AND MEDIEVAL UOCTPJNE. 343 

study. Occupying a judicial station, lie displayed unwonted in- 
i tegrity and humanity. He spent a great part of his wealth in 
I donations to learned men, both friends and foes. He wrote a 
I vast commentary on the works of the Stagyrite, to whose author- 
I ity he was bhndly devoted. His Aristotelian doctrine of the 
soul was the head and front of his offending. 

For this error he suffered the severest hardships and indigni- 
; ties. By the caliph he was denounced as heretical, his goods 
confiscated, and himself banished to the Jews' quarters of the 
j city of his abode, Cordova. He fled to Fez, was discovered and 
i imprisoned. In a council of lawyers and divines it was argued 
by some that he deserved death ; but milder opinions prevailed. 
He was placed at the gate of the Mosque, that the devout Mos- 
lems might spit in his face on the way to their prayers. Profes- 
I sing penitence for his heresy, he was allowed to return to 
! Cordova, where, after years of poverty, in evil times and in 
j remembrance of his civic virtues, he was made once more gov- 
I ernor. 

I The name of Averroes, however, has much more to do with 
this history, than as an illustration of the persecuting spirit. He 
j was the great commentator on the works of Ai-istotle, "the Phi- 
losopher," and his writings had become the standard of philo- 
j eophic, we had almost said of Christian, orthodoxy. To this 
'l paramount influence of one who was doubtless the greatest 
! thinker the world had yet known, the most vigorous resistance 
had been made, for the express reason that he taught no after 
life ; and when the Stagyrite was installed as the great teacher 
i in the schools of Christendom, this serious defect must be got 
over as best it could. Hence the great effort, then as now, to 
I show that he was orthodox and did teach a life to come. And 
now that the great light of Arabia pronounced him heterodox, 
his influence must be put down. Averroism was a new heresy 
i to be refuted; and against it Aquinas, " the Angelical Doctor," 
' wrote one of his books. Scholastic philosophy was divided on 
the great question; the "Thomists," or followers of Aquinas, 
'I affirming the soundness of the philosophic form of faith, and the 
|! "Scotists" denying it. Duns Scotus declared the soul's immor- 



344 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



tality not provable by the light of nature, and rested its evidence 
solely on Revelation ; he thought those who reposed the bui-den 
of this faith elsewhere than on the word of Christ, unworthy of 
the Christian name; he, with his followers, thought Nature 
here furnished probabilities, but not proofs ; she could persuade, 
but she could not assure ; her pupils might believe, but they 
could not know, as do they who recognize a Redeemer.^ 

It may surprise many that the apostasy of an Arabian Peri- 
patetic could so affect the parties of Christendom. What had 
Franks to do with Moors, that Averroes should spend his breath 
to say " he would rather his soul should be with the philosophers 
than with the Christians?" or that Erasmus should wish that a 
certain great work " had been written against the impious and 
thrice accursed Averroes ? " The reason is soon told. The 
learning of the world was once Arabic ; and Christendom owed 
to the sons of Ishmael debts of literature and theology, which 
are not yet discharged. An able writer remarks upon the times 
of which we are speaking : " The works of many of the most 
distinguished Moorish authors became the text books of the 
Christian schools. Thus the works of Avicenna and Averroes, 
on logic and metaphysic, were studied in the Sorbonne, then the 
chief school of theology in Christendom ; and it is to this 
cause that we owe the very doubtful benefit of the scholastic 
philosophy of the middle ages. ' This scholasticism,' says Mr. 
Berrington, ' was the genuine philosophy of the Arabian schools 
in the common questions of human research, and accommodated, 
in those of theology, to the specific objects of the Christian 
code. Surprised we must be, observes Denina, when we learn 
that our ancestors derived, from those very Mohammedans 
whom they perpetually reviled, the greater part of the doctrine 
which, during many ages, was taught in the Christian schools. 
Such was the doctrine of the Divine Being and His attributes, 
grace and free will, human actions, virtue and vice, eternal pun- 
ishment, and heaven. Even the very titles of the works of the 
Arabians and Schoolmen on these subjects are so similar as to 

1 See Mosheim's notes to Cudworth's Intel]. Syst. I. 98, 99; III. 470-472; 
—Miinsclier, Dogmatic History, § 124;— Bayle, Hist, and Crit. Diet. art. Perrot. 



JEWISH AND MEDIEVAL DOCTRINE. 



345 



i induce a suspicion that the one must have been copied from tha 
other.' " 1 

j The Church was now fully committed to a pliilosophic faith, 
! and bent her energies to the harmonizing of faith and reason 
upon that basis. Of reasoning, such as it was, she had plenty ; 
the faith must be created by authority. Leo the Tenth issued 
his bull instructing the philosophers not to teach the mortality of 
j the soul. The distinction which had been made between the 
■ deductions of reason and the decrees of the Church, incurred 
censure, and was declared untenable by the Lateran Council, 
A. D. 1513, when also the proper immortality of the soul w^as 
finally declared an article of faith. 

But nature will not be forced ; and the Stagyrite, though in- 
structed so carefully, would now and then speak out his old ways 
of thinking. Just before the day of emancipation from this bond- 
age the Averroist drama was reenacted, wdth variations suited 
to the character of a believer. Pomponatius, born at Mantua, 
A. D. 1462, became an eminent Peripatetic, holding the ethics 
j of Aristotle, while he avowed that immortality must be taught 
I in another school. As a moralist he affirmed that one should do 
' right not for the sake of rev/ard. Virtue is never so perfect 
as when it brings no dower with it." And if the good man is 
already recompensed, w^here is his claim to an after life, and 
where out of the Scriptures is his proof of it ? But, with Plato, 
Pomponatius held that " the legislator, intent on public good, 
may establish the doctrine of the immortality of the soul ; thus, 
seeking the common weal rather than truth, he may draw man- 
kind to virtue." ^ 

From such language it has been wrongly inferred that he him- 
t self denied a future life. Rather, he would ask the Schoolmen 
to be consistent; and, perhaps in scorn of a prevalent hireling 
Christianity, he loved to speak of virtue as self-sustaining. But 
he firmly maintained the doctrine of an after life, as a revealed 
fact. On principles of reason, this was " an insoluble problem, 
like that of the eternity of the world. No rational arguments 



1 Dublin Univ. Mag., June, 1855, art. The Arabs in Spain. See Eclec. ling., 
Aug. 1855. 2 Dq luimort. Auinite, cc. 13, 14. 



346 



THE HISTOPvICAi. ARGUMENT. 



can demonstrate either that the soul is mortal or that it is immor- 
tal. . . . We must, with Plato, refer the question to the 
decision of God. . . . The divine rerdict is as hght itself 
compared with the darkness of our philosophy. . . . Where- 
fore, past all doubt, we must declare the soul immortal ; but not 
after the method of the wise men of this world, who in their 
conceit of wisdom have become fools ; for he who follows their 
path must ever wander, I think, and wander into uncertainty." ^ 
On the charge of denying the immortality of the soul, Pompo- 
natius was summoned before the Inquisition. He confessed that 
he did not believe in the current proofs of the doctrine. He 
perhaps challenged his judges to show a faith in the Gospel 
equal to his own. By the influence of friends he escaped con- 
demnation ; but his book was burned. 

§ 11. MODERN HISTORY. 

The attempt to reduce the glorious hope of immortality to a 
dogma and an edict, was met by Luther with a vigorous recalci- 
tration. " I permit the Pope," says he, in 1520, " to establish 
articles of faith for his faithful followers ; such as that the bread 
and wine are transmuted in the sacrament ; that the divine es- 
sence is neither generative nor generated ; that the soul is the 
substantial form of the human body ; that himself is the Ruler 
of the world, and King of Heaven, and God on Earth ; that the 
soul is immortal; and all the numberless prodigies of the Romish 
dunghill of decretals." ^ 

We have already seen that Luther doubtless held the early 
Christian doctrine of the intermediate state. This fact, together 
with the above expression may only show that he held the vicAv 
we have given of man's middle nature. And it was enough for 
Luther to state the problem of an after life, without solving it. 
He soon found that it was an ample work to vindicate the free- 
ness of God's grace, and the freedom of man's thought, against 

1 De Immort. Animse, c. 14. 

2 Assertio omnium articulorum per Bulhim Leonis X. novissimam damna- 
torum. — 0pp. II. fol. 307. 



MODEKX niSTORY. 



347 



the authorities of a thousand 3^ears. Moreover, such were the 
popular notions of the age respecting Satan, and such was the 
native temper of Luther's mind, that he might be less burdened 
than most persons with the doctrine of eternal evil. The great 
Adversary was not then conceived as he appears in the Para- 
dise Lost/' — a princely dignitary of wickedness, — but as the 
Mephistopheles of German story. " It is somewhat remarka- 
ble," says Augusti, " that the devil of the middle ages seems to 
have lost much of his terror and liideousness, and to play rather 
the part of a cunning impostor and merry fellow, . . . more 
like a fawn who excites laughter rather than fear." ^ Luther 
was just the man to assault such an Adversary with an inkstand. 
It was neither his work nor his care to prove him mortal. His 
foith was like Bunyan's, — rising higher for every trial to which 
it was subjected ; it was positive, not a bundle of negations. 
Like Bunyan, he rarely speaks of eternal misery. And in 
theology he was fond of paradox. Yet in that brave heart there 
was a struggle respecting the justice of God and the destinies of 
men, of which the world knows little. In that remarkable book, 
his treatise " De Servo Arbitrio," which we have cited for its 
absolutist theology, he shows himself no stranger to the Conflict 
of Ages. A few passages will show how he sought to decide it. 
He says : 

" This, forsooth, offends most of all that ' common sense' or 
* natural reason,' that God of his own mere will abandons, har- 
dens, damns men, as if He who is declared to be of so great 
mercy and goodness were pleased with so great and eternal sins 
and torments of the miserable creatures. Unjust, cruel, intol- 
erable has it appeared to think thus of God ; whence so many and 
so great men, for so many centuries, have stumbled. 

And who would not be offended ! I myself stumbled, not 
once alone, even to the depths, the abyss of despair, until I knew 
how salutary was that despair, and how near unto grace. Llere 
men have sweat and toiled, to vindicate the goodness of God and 
to impugn the will of man ; they have made distinctions between 

^ Dogmengeschichte, p. 320; cited by Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc, § 172. 



348 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



God's ordained and his absolute will, behveen necessity of con- 
sequence and of the consequent/ and many others like these. 
But nothing is gained by them, except to impose on simple peo- 
ple by empty words and the oppositions of science falsely so 
called. That thorn still remains fixed deep in the hearts of men 
both simple and learned, whenever they think seriously on the 
subject ; so that they must feel the difficulties we do, if they be- 
lieve the foreknowledge and omnipotence of God." ^ 

Again he says : " Here God is to be honored and revered, 
most merciful as he is toward those whom he justifies and saves, 
when they are most unworthy, and something, at least, is to be 
conceded to his wisdom, so that he may be believed just when 
he seems to us unjust. For if his justice were such as could be 
pronounced just by human capacity, it would certainly not be 
divine, and would differ in nothing from human justice. But 
since he is the alone God, altogether incomprehensible and inac- 
cessible by human reason, it is right, nay it is necessary, that his 
justice also should be incomprehensible."^ Again he says, in 
the passage already cited : " Thus doth He conceal his clemency 
and mercy beneath his eternal wrath, his justice beneath injus- 
tice. Here is the highest degree of faith, — to believe that he 
is merciful who saves so few and damns so many ; to believe 
that he is just, who, of his own will, makes us necessarily dam- 
nable, so that he should seem, as Erasmus says, to be pleased 
with the torments of wretched beings, and worthy of hatred 
rather than of love. If, therefore, I could in any way compre- 
hend how that God is merciful and just who shows so great 
wrath and injustice, there would be no need of faith. But now, 
since it can not be comprehended, there is room for the exercise 
of faith, while such things are asserted and proclaimed ; just as 
when God slays, faith in life is exercised in the hour of death."* 

Here is the very blindness of faith which it cost Maimonides 
so much to oppose. It was the inheritance of long ages of dark- 

1 " Necessltas consequenti^e et consequentis." A thing may be necessary as 
sequence, but not as fact. For this and other distinctions see Alstedius, Meta- 
physica, Pars I. c. 41. 

2 0pp. II. fol. 461, 462. 3 lb. fol. 485. 4 ib. fol. 434. 



SrODERN HISTORY. 



349 



ness, which Luther must share for a while with the men of his 
time. But in the same treatise we see his mind struggling 
against the tyranny which had imposed the bitter bondage, in 
the following passage : " You must feel yourself in some measure 
awed in the presence of a succession of learned men, and by the 
consent of so many ages, during which flourished scholars so 
'conversant in sacred literature, and martyrs illustrious by so 
many miracles. To all this must be added the more modern 
theologians, universities, bishops, and popes. On their side are 
arrayed learning, genius, numbers, dignity, station, power, sanc- 
tity, miracles, and what not. On mine, Wicklilfe and Lauren- 
tius Valla, and, though you forget to mention him, Augustine 
also. Then comes Luther, a mean man, born but yesterday, 
supported only by a few friends, who have neither learning, nor 
genius, nor greatness, nor sanctity, nor miracles. Put them all 
together, and they have not wit enough to cure a spavined 
horse. What are they ? What the wolf said of the nightingale, 
— a voice, and nothing else. I confess it is with reason that 
you pause in such a presence as this. For ten years together 
I hesitated myself. Could I believe that this Troy, which had 
triumphed over so many assaults, v/ould fall at last? I call 
God to witness that I should have persisted in my fears, and 
should have hesitated until now, if truth had not compelled me 
to speak. You may well believe that my heart is not rock ; 
and, if it were, yet so many are the waves and storms which 
have beaten upon it, that it must have yielded when the whole 
weight of this authority came thundering on my head, like a 
deluge ready to overwhelm me."'^ 

The same feelings are expressed at a later date, as follows : 
"0, what pain it has cost me, though the Scripture is on my 
side, to defend myself to my own heart for having dared singly 
to resist the Pope, and to denounce him as Antichrist ! What 
.'have been the afflictions of my bosom ! How often, in the bit- 
terness of my soul, have I pressed myself with the papist's argu- 
ment, — Art thou alone wise ? Are all others in error ? Have 

1 0pp. II. fol. 435, 436. 

30 



350 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



tliey been mistaken for so long a time ? What if you are your 
self mistaken, and are dragging with you so many souls into 
eternal condemnation ? Thus did I reason -with myself, till 
Jesus Christ, by His own infallible word, tranquillized my heart, 
and sustained it against this argument, as a reef of rocks thrown 
up against the waves laughs at all their fury." ^ 

The Calvinists and Arminians accepted the notion of eternal 
evil, and revived the controversy of Augustine and Pelagius. 
The Socinians denied it, and with it the divinity of Christ, for 
which it had been made a great argument. The following 
words of Calvin to Socinus show how the infinite terror which 
sanctioned the principle of compulsion in Augustine's day, was 
again at work. " I seriously warn you of what I have before 
declared, that unless you correct in season this luxurious inquis- 
itiveness, it is to be feared you will bring on yourself heavy ca- 
lamities. I should be perfidious and cruel, if, under the mask of 
tenderness, I indulged what appears to me a most hurtful vice. 
I had rather, therefore, you should be a little displeased with my 
harshness, than not reclaimed from the curiosity which flatters 
and bewitches you. The time I hope will come, when you will 
be glad you are so roughly awakened."^ But to the praise of 
Calvin we shall show that on certain points he allowed opinions 
deemed unsafe by many of his followers. And Socinus himself 
shared the old error, approving the restraint and even the im- 
prisonment of heretics.^ 

In his treatise on the "Authority of the Scriptures," So- 
cinus laments that so few professed Christians understood the 
hope of life in the Resurrection, as the distinctive Christian mo- 
tive and support of virtue. For the sake of immortality as the 
free gift of Christ, he could and did endure many evils — exile, 
the loss of goods, violence and insult. Of his followers we may 
believe the testimony of Bayle, replying to the charge of Jurieu 
that his doctrine subverts the foundation of morals. He says : 
" It is matter of public notoriety, that in respect to morals, no 

1 Cited with the above passage by Stephen, Essays in Eccl. Biog., Luther. 

2 Toulmin, Life of Socinus, p. xii. 3 ibid. p. 95. 



MODERN HISTORY. 



351 



sect has approached more nearly to the simplicity and strictness 
of the early Christians than the Socinians."^ 

Since the Socinians were known as a Christian community, 
the doctrine in question has been held by no large class of men 
until recently. But John Locke began his defence of the " Eea- 
sonableness of Christianity " by protesting against the doctrine 
of an immortal death ; and his controversy with the Bishop of 
Worcester is well known to the readers of the Essay on the 
Understanding. His Grace supposed that the common faith in 
an after life is endangered, if the philosophic proof of immor- 
tality is abandoned. Locke's reply is in the spirit of Pompon- 
atius. Our hope of eternal life rests on the promise of God, 
and not on the subtleties of men. The reply is warmly ap- 
proved by Le Clerc ; ^ and in the same style Archdeacon Black- 
burne has said : " The more any one is convinced of the immor- 
tality of the soul from the principles of Aristotle and Des 
Cartes, the less will he concern himself about the Gospel ac- 
count of futurity." ^ But, though Locke was a great heretic in his 
day, he has lately been set down as orthodox, thus : " Practically he 
\fas a spiritualist, and recognized the great facts of our spiritual 
and moral nature, as well as the existence of God and the immor- 
tality of the soul." ^ 

The history of the doctrine of immortality owes something to 
Warburton, of whose ability Thomas Chalmers- has spoken in 
the highest terms. He says : " The first name that occurs to us 
of one w^ho conjoined original strength with acquired scholarship, 
is Grotius. Cudworth had both, Chillingworth had both, Brian 
Walton had both, Stillingfleet had both, Samuel Clarke had 
both, Warburton had preeminently both." In his principal w^ork 
Warburton does not directly express an opinion respecting the 
destiny of the wicked. But he approves the faith of Locke in 
the Gospel, speaks of the revolt of reason at the thoughts of 

.1 Eeponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part. II. c. 134. Jurieu attributed 
to tlie macliinations of Satan the vii'tues which gave respectability to the So- 
dnian doctrine. 

2 Parrhasiana, c. 10. 3 Compare Dwiglit, Theolog}^,!. 163. 

* Turnbull, Pref. to Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions, p. xxxi. 



352 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



everlasting punisliment, designates those who hold the prevail- 
ing view as the unmerciful doctors," and asks : " Doth annihi- 
lation impeach that wisdom and goodness which God displayed 
when he brought the soul out of nothing ? " ^ The great value of 
his work is its portraiture of the despair, and incidentally, of the 
"double doctrine," of the ancients, which should check our 
proneness to read history backward and to extol antiquity and 
philosophy to the disparagement of the Gospel. 

The only service rendered by the learned Henry Dodwell is 
his defence of the middle nature of man. The reply of Samuel 
Clarke found a still more able rejoinder. ^ But Dodwell burdened 
the doctrine of gratuitous immortality Avith his High Church con- 
ceit that the soul is actually immortalized by the pleasure of 
God, to punishment or to reward, through baptism : and that the 
Bishops only had this immortalizing power ! Yet, somehow, in 
his opinion, no unbeliever in a Christian land could " hope for 
the benefit of actual mortality " ! ^ 

Isaac Watts should here be named as having held that infants 
dying without baptism are annihilated. " * He deserves praise 
for his exposure of a flagrant instance of pious fraud, by Thomas 
Burnet, who had advised the preacher of the Gospel, in sly 
Latin, " to use the common doctrine and the common language " 
concerning future punishments, whether he thinks them eternal 
or not. Watts -thought the exposure of such guile less scanda- 
lous than its concealment, and translated the passage. ^ Bur- 
net was a restorationist. 

During the last century the doctrine of life in Christ only 
found earnest advocates in Samuel Bourne,® J. N. Scott,'^ John 
Taylor, author of a Hebrew Concordance, and in the editors of 
Goadby's Bible. It was perhaps held by Edward King, the 
able writer of the "Morsels of Criticism," 1788.^ In 1817, a 

1 Divine Legation, b. 9. c. 1. 

2 Defence of Dodwell, by a Presbyter of the Church of England. 

3 Epistolar}' Discourse, 1706, pp. xix. 301. 

4 Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, quest, xvi. principle 3. 
o World to Come, Disc. xiii. 

6 Sermons, I. 371-415. ^ Sermons xvii., xviii. 8 Note on 2 Pet. iii. 7, 9 



MODERN HISTORY. 



353 



" Blember of the Church of England " supported it in a -work in 
which he tells us that he had sought a corroboration of the 
received doctrine in two discourses from different divines, and 
he then began to doubt who never did before. We find al- 
lusion also to a work by Fontaine, " The Immortality of the 
Wicked," wdiich we have not seen. The doctrine has been 
advocated more recently by J. P. Ham, with marked ability, 
though with views from which we dissent ; by H. H. Dobnej^, 
in a work republished in this country ; and by Edward White, 
to whose work we have alluded. It is offered by Sir James 
Stephen and by Abp. Whately in passages which we have cited. 
It is ably treated in a late work on the " Duration of Evil," 
and in other brief treatises. On the other side have appeared 
the "Athanasia" of J. H. Hinton,and the " Doctrine of Rewards 
and Punishments " by Dr. Hamilton. This work is one of the 
volumes growing out of the Congregational Lecture of London, 
and while we criticise its argument we are happy to commend 
its style as masterly in its kind, — sententious, and stately. 

In Germany the question has received but little attention ; 
and, as is well known, Restorationism is there the prevalent 
style of opinion. We find, however, allusion to a treatise 
published in 1782, in support of the doctrine we hold. In the 
'•Theodicee" of Werdermann (1784), the following expression 
is here worthy of notice, though it may not state a conviction 
respecting any future destiny. He says : " This, then, would 
be the fall of an angel, — sin against the Holy Ghost; its 
punishment, damnation, wdiich ends only with the entire cessa- 
tion of existence" (I. 189). The principles which underlie this 
doctrine have been more recently maintained by C. H. Weisse, 
Professor in the University of Leipsic, in his " Esoteric Doc- 
tr"ne of Immortality,"^ a critique on certain Pantheistic de- 
v^ 'opments, and in other treatises to which we have alluded. 

in our own country the doctrine in question has been ad- 
vocated by Elias Smith, though among his followers it is not 

1 V\'alterus, Priifung einiger TV'ichtiger Lehren theol. u. phil. Inhalts. 

2 Die philosopliische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen 
Individuums, Dresden, 1834. 

30* 



354 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



unquestioned. It was ably supported by the late Dr. Bancroft, 
of Worcester.^ It is apparently made the basis of an argument 
by Jared Sparks, who, however, disclaims it as having a pro- 
perly Unitarian history.^ Dr. Channing, speaking of the pains 
and penalties of moral evil, makes the following remarks : 
" How long they will continue, I know not. Whether they will 
issue in the reformation and happiness of the sufferer, or will 
terminate in the extinction of his conscious being, is a question 
on which Scripture throws no clear light. Plausible arguments 
may be adduced in support of both these doctrines. On this 
and on other points revelation aims not to give precise infor- 
mation, but to fix in us a deep impression, that great suffering 
awaits a disobedient, wasted, immoral, irreligious life." ^ 

The recent discussion of the subject in this country was 
occasioned by the publication of Six Sermons on the question : 
"Are the Wicked Immortal?" — by George Storrs, editor of 
the " Bible Examiner." These discourses have passed through 
numerous editions, and, with other publications that have been 
issued, have begun to command general attention and no small 
respect for the, to many, new doctrine. The most considerable 
argument which has appeared in reply is the truly eloquent 
discussion of Dr. Post, in the New Englander, whose articles 
were secured with a view to their republication with a reply ; 
a design which we hope may be soon carried into effect. A 
return of the like courtesy, earnestness, and appreciation of the 
difficulties encountered, could not fail to improve the spirit of 
doctrinal controversy. 

Our historical argument, as we have ventured to name it, is al- 
ready long drawn out. But it would be incomplete if we did not, 
in conclusion, allude on the one hand to the Restorationism which 
so many persons now either rejoice in or deplore ; and on the other 
hand, to what we have called the esoteric doctrine of a future 
life that has appeared in Germany. This is not confined to 

1 On the Doctrines of the Gospel, Sermons xxvi.-xxviii. 

2 Doctrines of Eternal Punishment and Annihilation; Letters to Dr. Miller, 
Part iv. Letter v. 

3 The Evil of Sin, Works, IV. 166, 167. 



I 



MODERN HISTORY. 355 

i Germany, nor to sceptics. In France it appears in the Pan- 
] theism of Le Roux, who tells us that the human soul is eternal ; 
j for whatever exists or lives is eternal, being created from eter- 
1 nitj. "You live, therefore you are eternal."^ The common 
thinking of England and America is not yet sufficiently unprac- 
tical to be very pantheistic ; we have yet to see whether the 
half truth that duty is its own reward, and needs no heaven for 
I its encouragement, will in these countries be made the watch- 
word for taking leave of God, and futurity, and duty itself. 
But in Germany the doctrine of immortality has so far forsaken 
the Gospel that some of the ablest interpreters and preachers 
speak of man's nature and man's hopes in the style of the 
ancient philosophers. Thus De Wette tells us of the soul, " its 
immortality, or more correctly, its eternity," which, as he ex- 
plains himself, has an equal relation to the past and the future. 
And according to Schleiermacher, religion is the sense of the 
union of the individual with the Universe, with Nature, or, in 
the lanojuao-e of the sect, with the One and All. It is a feel- 
ing ; it has nothing to do with belief or action ; it is unconnect- 
ed with morality ; it is independent of the idea of a personal 
God. The idea of a personal God is pure mythology. And 
the belief and desire of personal immortality is " wholly irre- 
ligious," as being opposed to that which is the aim of religion, — 
" the annihilation of one's own personality," " the living in the 
One and All," " the becoming, as far as possible, one with the 
universe." We need not M^onder, when such things are said by 
those who v/ere probably Christians in spite of their errors, if 
others wax witty and wicked, as does Goethe, the acknowledged 
prince of German literature, in the following speech occasioned 
by allusion to Tiedge's Urania, a religious poem. " I found 
\ stupid women," he says, " who were proud of believing in im- 
! mortality with Tiedge ; and I was obliged to submit to be ex- 
i amined by many of them on this point in a very conceited man- 
1 ner. But I scandalized them by saying I could be well con- 



1 "Vous etes ^ternel,"puisqiie vous vivez." See Lacoudre, Theodicea, p. 192, 



356 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



tent, that after the close of this life we should be blessed with 
another, but I would beg not to have there for companions any 
who believed in it here. For in that case, what vexation would 
await me ! The pious would come round me and say, Were 
we not in the right? Did we not predict it ? Has it not hap- 
pened ? And so there too I should be bored without end. It 
is for the higher classes, and especially for women of quality, 
who have nothing to do, to busy themselves with ideas of im- 
mortality. But an able man, who thinks that there is some- 
thing to be done here, and who, therefore, has every day to 
.strive, to fight, and to work, leaves the future world to itself, 
and is active and useful in the present. Ideas of immortality, 
moreover, are for such as have not attained the best fortune 
here ; and I would wager that if Tiedge had had better luck, 
he would have had better thoughts." ^ 

We need not speak of the caviling Pantheism of Feuerbach, 
whose work entitled the " Essence of Christianity " is designed 
to explain how God and Man, Deity and Humanity, are one 
and the same. But when Strauss, whose " Life of Jesus " 
makes the Savior a myth, tells us, as the result of his " Doctrine 
of Faith," that " the idea of a future world is the last enemy 
which speculative criticism has to oppose, and, if possible, to 
overcome,"^ we are led to ask, How can the idea of immortality 
combine the highest responsibility with the highest attractive- 
ness and value ? Must it not be in the assurance of endless per- 
sonal existence through faith in Him whose personal presence 
on the earth gave it new joy, and who alone has brought life and 
immortality to light ? 

1 Andrews Norton, Tracts on Christianity, pp. 307, sq. He cites De Wette 
Ueber Religion iind Theologie, pp. 20-26; — Schleiermacher, Ueber die Re- 
ligion, 1831, pp. 48, sq. ; — Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 1837,1. 120-122 

2Glaubenslehre, 11. 739. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 

" Unless Yoix understand a man's ignorance, you are certainly ignorant 
of his understanding." — Coleridge. 

The very terribleness of the received doctrine of the divine 
penalty is often made an argument for its truth. How have 
men come to fear eternal misery, if there be no such thing ? 
How can the delusion, if it be such, be accounted for? Would 
the God of all truth thus deceive men ? They may lie for Him, 
but we know that He will not lie for them. Would Satan put 
such a cheat upon us ? Why should he fray away from him, 
with infinite terrors those whom he would fain seduce and de- 
stroy? Have men, then, deceived themselves? Why should 
they, though ever so fond of delusion, affright themselves with 
such gloomy forebodings? Are they in love with misery? 
Why have they "thus ever tortured themselves for nought? 
Why have they indulged in those terrific inventions of fancy, 
handing down, from age to age, and from generation to genera- 
tion, a useless, yet most tormenting anxiety?"^ 

These are pertinent questions ; and they are not fully an- 
swered by referring to the great precedents of error in the his- 
tory of mankind. None of the old corruptions of heathenism, 
nor of the protested errors of Romanism, are like the doctrine 
of eternal and escapeless woe as the destiny of the majority of 
men. The notions of infant damnation and of torment by 
literal fire, now discarded by almost all Protestants, are indeed 
cogent examples of what exploits of terrible error man can 
achieve. But either of these may be deemed mere aggravations 

1 Tayler Lewis, Plato and the Atheists, p. 322. 



358 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



of a terror that is real, — the blackened shadows of a substantial 
truth. And it is not enough to say that malignity has disposed 
men to believe one another liable to eternal woe ; for kind men 
have feared this for themselves. Nor is it enough to say that 
superstition accounts for the doctrine ; for the most Christian 
communities and the largest and most fearless niinds have 
cherished it. Yet a most eminent divine has ventured the 
remark that " even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, 
we may be involved in some enormous error, of which the 
Christianity of the future will make us ashamed;"^ and we 
think the terrible doctrine in question may be explained as 
an error ; and that its derivation from the workings of a fallen 
nature may even illustrate the saying, that " the laws of disease 
are as beautiful as the laws of health." 

§ 1. THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF THEODICY. 

None of the theories of divine justice which we have ex- 
amined, could, indeed, create the original error. Their ofl&ce 
has been to justify and sustain an existing doctrine. But the 
support they have rendered might establish the opinion in the 
minds of the wavering, and even persuade the faith of the scep- 
tical. Some of the theodicies are, moreover, expressions of sen- 
timents lying deep in our common nature, which have contrib- 
uted, we think, to produce the doctrine. These will be noted 
as we proceed. 

§ 2. FAITH IN SECOND CAUSES. 

In the combination of the two theories of man's dignity is il- 
lustrated the nature of philosophy, as distinct from faith in the 
continuous power and goodness of God. A " nature of things" 
seems nearer to man than God is ; and he is prone, at whatever 
hazards, to rest his hopes upon it. The creation which is 
derived from God is also separated from Him. Projected into 

1 Vinet, Personal Profession of Religious Conviction. 



THE TEMPORAL AND THE ETERNAL. 



359 



being, it subsists without Him. His continued care and power 
seems needless for it, if not burdensome to Him. He may leave 
all various things to their various laws. Our confidence in 
these is flattered by our own power of self-action, the autonomy 
of our personal being. We no longer live, and move, and have 
our being, in God ; we might even survive Him. 

This mingled reliance on Nature, and distrust of its Author, 
vitiates our proper philosophy. That ceases to be a conception 
of things possible ; we must conceive many things as necessary. 
The must he seems to us more reliable than the may he. Des- 
tiny is better, if not grander, than privilege. So we turn God's 
laws — the free methods of His constant love — into fetters for 
His hands. Tf He promises eternal hfe, there must be an im- 
mortality somewhere, that binds the promise together; and to 
the forces of nature on this side of God, we add such things as 
we can imagine on the other side of God ; and with our bark 
thus undergirded and overgirded, we can trust immortal hopes, 
and immortal fears, too, upon it. This extravagance and per- 
version of philosophy, we think, explains many such expressions 
as this : " We have before us life and death ; and while God 
ever invites every man to choose the good, the immutability of 
His counsel forbids Him to change the laws against which we 
may dash ourselves into every wreck of self-conscious misery, 
if we determine to create for ourselves evil." It is illustrated, 
also, in those theodicies which find in the soul itself a law of eter- 
nal sinfulness or eternal sorrow. 

§ 3. THE TEMPORAL AND THE ETERNAL. 

Men are prone either to overlook the infinite difference 
between these, or to reason from one to the other. The first 
error is illustrated in the common use of the word "everlasting" 
in a limited sense, and in the careless use of the word " infinite." 
Thus we often meet such phrases as "infinite stupidity and 
ingratitude," "infinite perverseness," "infinitely sorry and 
ashamed," " infinitely suitable," — excusable as hyperboles, but 
producing utter confusion when employed in theological discus- 



S60 



THE Pnil OSOPHT OF ERROK. 



sion. And because the difference between time and eternity is 
forgotten, most of those who have debated the question of the 
origin of evil have not touched the difficulties of its eternity. 
They have rarely thought that the temporal might be also, and 
significantly, temporary. 

And very often it is expressly argued that if sin exists at all, 
it may, by parity of reasoning, exist forever. For time, it is 
said, is a part of eternity ; both are subject to the same laws ; 
a moment's space and infinite duration are the same in kind; 
what may be done in the one may be done in the other. 

This view^ rests partly on the assumption before named, that 
continued existence lies in the nature of things, and not in the 
divine good pleasure. It follows that temporal evil may be 
eternal evil in a natural course, if not terminated by the arbi- 
trary will of the creature, or cut off by a miracle of the Cre- 
ator. And both vievvs are apparent in the same theodicies. 

§ 4. THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

Man is prone to regard the immaterial and invisible, as im- 
mortal and eternal. They elude his grasp. His power can not 
arrest them ; why should he presume to limit the duration of 
their being? But in the unseen world are evil spirits, — fallen 
angels ; is not evil eternal in them, and in all who shall prove 
to be like them ? 

The existence and agency of evil spirits, which has furnished 
the great occasion for popular superstition, has encouraged not 
a few of the theological errors we have noted. " If they have 
survived their fall temporarily, why may they not do so eternally ? 
If they are permitted to tempt men temporarily, why may they 
not tempt some or other of God's creatures eternally ? Does 
not God preserve them in being for such a purpose ? " Thus the 
difficulties created by the delay of the divine judgment are taken 
to shov/ that evil is part of the divine economy. And the false 
theology is confirmed by a philosophy forgetful of the case of 
brute souls, and by an exegesis forgetful of the destruction that 
awaits Satan and his works. It is forgotten that evil angels and 



THE MYSTERY OF SIN. 



3G1 



dasmons have not yet received their finrJ doom. If, in terror 
of this, the diemons are spoken of by one evangelist as crying 
out: "Art thou come to destroy us?" and by another, "Art 
thou come to torment lis before the time ? " — the varying express- 
ions are made into an argument of eternal indestructibility and 
torment without end. The recorded fact offered as the great 
example of the destiny of all evil, — the vengeance of eternal 
fire visited upon Sodom and Gomorrah, is transferred to an 
unseen world, and erected into a dominion of eternal evil. 

§ 0. THE MYSTERY OF SIN. 

This has given similar, if not greater, occasion for the belief of 
its perpetuity. The inexplicable is even more alarming than the 
invisible. Hence we are told that " it is absurd to limit the 
scope of an unknown cause. But the present existence of evil 
is a mystery no human intellect has ever sounded." The abyss 
seems like an infinite depth. And indeed, sin, bafiling all ex- 
planation, does observe no law ; it defies all control ; it knows 
no limit save the compulsion of a higher power or its own self- 
exhaustion. Especially as a mystery does it affect all that is 
fearful in darkness. As blackness is the symbol of its guilt, so 
darkness is its covert, the hiding of its power. It comes like a 
thief — no one knows when or how. We dread its encounter, 
as of a deadly foe at midnight. With all the armor of right- 
eousness, we know not where to strike the Adversary, but, having 
done all, can only stand against his wiles. The course of evil 
is capricious. It can not be met in open field, nor watched with 
spies. It is ever false and deceitful. It may seem asleep or 
dead; but only again to surprise and alarm mankind, until it is 
finally destroyed. 

The mystery of Evil gives it a certain mock divinity. The 
black art expresses something of its meaning and power. The 
evil eye — the magic spell — the incantation — whatever seems 
to produce efifects unmeasured by a cause, is a type of it. And 
here it has been well rem.arked, " The old saying that Satan is 
an ape of God, has its most significant truth. It is the pre- 



362 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



r 



sumptuous assumption of evil to be in its way causa sui as God, 
absolutely to make its beginning from itself and only to pre- 
suppose itself." ^ 

This untraceable lawlessness of Evil has obviously contributed 
to the doctrine of it as an eternal vicissitude, to be prevented only 
by its being bound, like Prometheus on Caucasus, in so rigorous 
a punishment that it shall lose all power of infection or escape. 
It is forgotten that it has no being of its own, and subsists only 
as a perversion, in the imperfect, and therefore as temporary. 
It is like God only in the affectation of independence, which it 
can only attain by perishing. 

§ 6. ADVANTAGES OF EVIL OVER GOOD. 

It is easier to destroy than to create. The formation of the 
world is described as a six days' work of God, which man spoil- 
ed by the act of -a moment. Weeds and thistles grow of them- 
selves ; what is useful requires culture. Deterioration is natu- 
ral ; improvement comes of care and effort. Vice is indulgence ; 
virtue is self-denial. There is nothing good but it is costly, and 
the Destroyer has a light task, because the road downward is 
easy, the path onward and upward is ever difficult. 

Again, evil is unscrupulous. It can employ all possible 
methods to effect its ends. Truth and falsehood^ the lie direct 
and the lie indirect, the virtues and the vices of men, all God's 

1 Miiller, Chr. Doc. of Sin, II. 190. Compare p. 189: " When Ritter observes 
that we may not call evil a wonder, for that it is much rather the very opposite 
of the miracle, I perfectly agree with him. The miracle as miracle, God works 
without the world; evil as evil the creature works without God. As the mira- 
cle is the secret of God, so is evil the secret of the world. The miracle in fact 
only happens on account of evil; God presents His holy secret to view, only 
that the world may forsake its ungodly mystery, and turn itself believingly to 
Him." 

The following remark of Maurice, Anc. Phil., c. 4, is pertinent here: " What 
is the worship of a good Being, when the evil dwells professedly side by side 
with Him ? The latter becom^es inevitably the God. The character of the 
whole service is leavened and moulded by his character. Let the theories i-e- 
specting the relation of the two beings towards each other be what they may, 
Ormuzd becomes really the servant of Ahriman. The Magians were in truth 
his priests, even when they were nominally bowing to his rival." 



THEORY OF SATISFACTION FOR SIN. 



363 



work that is yet unperfect, — is ready for use in the hands of 
> the Adversary ; and, though he may often overreach himself, he 
i is not hastened by zeal nor hindered by conscience as good men 
! are By violence or by fraud, by the shortest course and by 
the most circuitous and intricate methods, he may come at his 
, designs. The plot, and the attack by storm, are all his own. 
I Moreover, all evil is as irreparable as it is easy of acccom- 
! plishment. The good that is destroyed may be replaced, but 
the labor for this would have doubled it. The consumed dwel- 
ling may be rebuilt, yet itself is wholly lost; and no insurance 
policy, no future industry or economy, can expunge the account 
of loss. So when morals are corrupted and souls destroyed, the 
1 loss is as eternal as the truth of history. Good may grow out of 
it, as bountiful harvests grow upon the battle field. Its place 
may be supplied, by the Power that can raise up from the stones 
children to Abraham. Still heaven is defrauded, the consum- 
mation of its glory delayed, and God is robbed. And no penalty, 
or atonement, or act of omnipotence, can undo the devil's work. 

This mean advantage of Evil over Good affects our theology. 
It gives us a quick resentment, like that of the child, or the sav- 
age, angry at injurious things. It fills us with fear, to think the 
labor of years may come to nought in an hour. And when evil 
takes the form of wickedness, and man or devil appears as the 
enemy of all good, our indignation knows no narrow bounds. 
The evil, if unchecked, would subvert the world. It takes hold 
on infinity. Power alone is wanting, or the Creator would be 
dethroned. We extend our notion of evil as it is, — often great 
and overwhelming, — to the conception of it as it might be, 
and shudder before the creation of our own fancy. We forget 
that evil is limited, w^ithout and within, and that God is not 
alarmed. We devise methods and theodicies for the restraint 
or prevention of wrong, wdiich mend the evil case by marring it 
worse. 

§ 7. THEORY OF SATISFACTION FOR SIN. 

The misconception of the nature of evil as strictly irreparable 
has led to false views of punishment and of atonement. Penal 



364 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



suffering has been regarded as making amends for sin. The 
latent conviction that this is impossible has extended the notion 
of punishment, in vain pursuit of satisfaction, through eternity. 
Then, when the sinner was thought exposed to endless suffering, 
resort was had to the divine and infinite nature of Christ, and 
His temporary suffering was deemed a better mode of satisfying 
the demand of justice. This theory of the Atonement, matured 
by Anselm, and at first inferred from the doctrine in question, 
has in turn become one of its main supports. 

For, assuming the infinite suffering of Christ, .it has been 
asked, "Why should so large a price be paid for man's redemp- 
tion, if death alone were the penalty of his sin ? The value of 
the soul must correspond to the expense incurred for its salva- t 
tion. " The expiatory offering of the Son of God," we are told, \ 
" is a mystery at least as great as any involved in the doctrine 
of eternal punishment ; and the awe which a serious contempla- 
tion of it is adapted to produce passes into actual pain, unless 
we take some grand and awful view of the object which was to be 
effected by it. To think of the eternal Father slaying his well 
beloved Son for any purpose is amazing ; but to think of His 
doing so for a slight one is altogether appalling and impossible. 
The immortality of the soul stands in the fullest harmony with 
the vastness of the price that was paid for its redemption, and 
the eternity of future punishment with the infinite costliness of 
the ransom. It would afford a devout heart but little satisfac- 
tion to adopt a view which would represent the most Blessed as 
tender to His rebellious creatures, at the cost of representing 
Him as cruel to His Son." ^ The same argument appears in 
one of our hymns : 

" When God, the Mighty Maker, died 
For man the creature's sin." 

On the other hand many Christians have been pained to hear ■ 
the infinite satisfaction of Christ employed as an argument of 

1 Hinton, Athanasia, p. 162. (Eel. Rev. Aug. 1845.) Compare Pearson, on 
the Creed, art. 10 ; — Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, p. 502 ; — Thomp- 
son, Christian Theism, p. 426. 

31* 



THEOLOGY OF THE FEELINGS. 



365 



i His divinity, regarding it as an occasion of Socinianism. And 
it is truly painful to hear tlie atonement referred to a tremen- 
j dous exigency, and not to the free love of God, willing to bestow 
• upon our dying race an infinite good. Happily, we have not 
i known the proper sulFerings of Christ to be employed as a the- 
i odicy, as have been the "long continued suflferings of God" and 
the general fact of Redemption, by that form of argument which 
i charges the unspeakable gift of God as an infinite debt against 
man. 

§ 8. THEOLOGY OF THE FEELINGS. 

It may appear strange that a lively abhorrence of evil 
should in any way promote the belief that it will be eternal. 
But a question often asked of those who deny endless suffering 
will verify, if it does not explain, the paradox. " Have you 
thought of the evil of sin ? " And then, with a suggestion 
of one or two theodicies, we are told that the limitation of 
punishment (i. e. suffering) makes sin appear a trifle. 

There is a reason for this. Pure feeling spurns all bounds 
and limitations. Undetermined by the reason, it will not know 
its own object definitely, but ever apprehends the indefinite 
and the infinite. In the estimate of personal guilt it refuses 
all limit, as penitent confession refuses all justification or even 
extenuation. This is apparent in the remarkable words of 
Edwards : " I know not how to express better what my sins 
appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, 
and multiplying infinite by infinite. I go about very often, 
for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and 
in my mouth : ' Infinite upon infinite ! Infinite upon infinite ! ' 
When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, 
1 it looks like au abyss infinitely deeper than hell." The same 
I feeling, which knows no moderation of self-love, scorns the 
' limitation of others' guilt. Thus two zealous disciples of Christ 
desired to sit, the one on his right hand, the other on his 
left, in his kingdom; not thinking that such honor might be 
other, or even greater, than Heaven could bestow upon them. 
A few days after, in a fervor of indignation, they w^ould have 



366 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



I 

i 



called down fire from heaven upon a little town in Samaria, 
for the special sin of rejecting Jesus as about to give the 
Jews the preference (Luke ix. 53). Suppose, now, that the 
disciples had learned to talk of infinities as freely as modern 
Christians do. How easily might they have constructed a 
theory in which the poor villagers would be guilty of dethroning 
God and ruining the universe. And then the fire from heaven 
must be of the philosophic kind, the ignis sapiens, lest it 
should unwisely devour too soon, and divine justice suffer loss. 

But are we sure that if either the villagers had thought of 
such a crime, or the disciples of such a punishment, Christ 
would not have prayed : " Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do " ? The guilt would not have been infinite, 
nor the imprecation just, because each would have been an 
expression of indefinite, unrestrained feeling ; — passion over- 
flowing all bounds, yet neither of them infinite ; — the sin no 
larger than a poor villager's capacity, and the indignation 
very blind and of narrow limits. 

The hyperbole of the emotions, however, has its place in 
human theology, especially in discourses of practical religion ; 
and we find it in the revelation of the divine character and 
emotions, where many strong expressions and apparent dis- 
crepancies* can be explained only as accommodations to human 
forms of thought and speech. It was natural that a theology of 
the feelings, assuming the infinite importance of every thing 
related to God, — ^ as we see in the Rabbinical saying that "upon 
every letter of the Law are suspended mountains of sense," 
and in the frequent practice of giving to every text all its 
possible meanings,— and multiplying the expressions of the in- 
finite, should insist on the largest possible meaning of the revealed 
words. And as soon as the language of the feelings is adopted 
as that of the intellect, the work of error is done.^ 

We may here name as one of the perpetuating causes of error, 

disinclination to consider, or to re-consider, the doctrine of the 
»vine penalty. The subject is necessarily painful, v^^hatever 

' See the article by Prof. Park, Bibliotheca Sacra, 1850, pp. 533-580. 



THE SENSE OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY. 367 

be the doom of the lost. It is not directly a practical subject ; 
and since duty, and not punishment, is man's concern, and 
consequences are rnth God, it may seem trifling, or impertinent, 
to think much about the penalty of sin. Much less should 
we set our hardihood to the work of measuring it, as though 
we might be pleased to endure it. And when our fellow 
men seem not to fear it, we make the most of its terrors, 
so as, if possible, to alarm them. Then we deprecate the 
more any theory that seems to mitigate it. If there is any 
doubt, we take refuge in faith and mystery, and the error 
abides. 

§ 9. EXEGETICAL CAUSES. 

We have already seen that most of the supposed proofs 
of the received doctrine from Scripture, rest on the assumption 
of the soul's immortality. In other passages metaphor and 
drama are interpreted literally, by a process which betrays 
the theology of the feelings. The ignorance of Hebrew, and 
of the laws of interpretation, which we have noted among 
the Fathers of the Church, united with other causes, would 
make the danger of their misinterpretation of the diA^ne sanction 
almost certain. It was hardly to be expected that the schools 
of philosophy should so prize the rude language of a despised 
and dispersed nation, as to make the proper use of their sacred 
books. And to this day the New Testament fails to receive the 
light which it should from the Old Testament. Having already 
read its history backward, from our own preconceptions, and 
from what is "brought to light" in the Gospel, we are lotli 
to go back two thousand years to correct any error in the 
data of our doctrine respecting the world to come. 

§ 10. THE SENSE OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY. 

The mystery of Sin gives us a keen sense of human depravity 
as a thing utterly perverse and impracticable. We cannot 
reason with the bad man. He knows no argument but force, 
and that can never make him better than he is. That a finite 



368 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



creature should thus bafHe all good influences, seems impossible. 
We pronounce the heart of man not only destitute of all 
holiness, but as bad as it can be ; then man is not only utterly 
perverse, but infinitely wicked. Amazed and stupified, we con- 
ceive a higher power of evil, incarnated in the human person- 
ality, or working behind it, as a diabolic adversary working 
through man against God. Our just apprehension of Satan 
as an actual prince of this world is itself too prone to pass 
into Dualism. But we get little relief, when we turn from 
him to his subjects, — "the children of disobedience." The 
very feebleness of the human rebel against God overwhelms 
our reason, more than the splendid audaciousness of the fallen 
angel. In the contest between the finite and the Infinite, and 
by the measure of temerity, the less the sinner the greater the 
sin. Is it not infinite ? ^ 

§ 11. LACK OF FAITH IN THE POWER OF GOODNESS. 

"We often hear of " the omnipotence of love." Gentleness 
can subdue the heart that is callous to every other influence. 
Kindness can melt down the soul, when the obligations of law 
and duty are unfelt, and reproof and punishment only harden. 
And the present triumphs of human goodness are all eclipsed 
by the love of God in Christ, reconciling a hostile world to 
himself. • 

But to say that the power of the Gospel lies in its peculiar 
nature as a message of love, is one thing ; practically to believe 
this, is quite another thing. The early Christians did believe 
it, and rightly understood Christ's words — "If I be lifted up, 
I will draw all men unto me," — to mean, not that He would 
effect a universal salvation, but that the Gospel, supplanting the 

1 " Dualism," says Miiller, " has manifestly its theoretic and dialectic occa- 
sion ings, and it has them in the mode of thought which apparently stands 
diametrically opposed to it ; the pantheistic views of the time [we might here 
say, the reaction from Absolutism] have in them distinctly enough certain 
germs of the same ; and if Dualism, according to Schelling's exposition, is a 
system of self-disruption and despair of I'eason, the tone of the present day 
appears for the mo?t part adapted to fonn the development of those germs." — 
Chr. Doc. of Sin, I. 441, 442. 



I 

i LACK OF FAITH IN THE P0WP:R OF GOODNESS. 3Gi) 

! law of the Jew and the logic of the Gentile, should be the 
I power and the wisdom of God, for the changing of man's nature. 
I But the trial of their faith came. Jerusalem was destroyed; 
! Christ returned not yet from heaven ; persecutions abounded ; and 
— what was harder to bear — sceptics began to scoff and gibe, 
asking, " Where is the promise ? " To meet the new difficulties, 
, there were, says Bunsen, " two ways open : that of practical, 
[j and that of theoretical or speculative Christianity. Why did 
I' not all serious Christians choose the former ? '* The answer is, 
j love waxed cold ; the special nature of the Gospel was forgotten ; 
i and the human, carnal methods of defence and propagandism 
began to be employed. The message of life was reduced by 
I turns to a creed, a theology, a civil law and polity. The name 
I of the " Gospel " was retained ; but the idea of Justice had 
i supplanted that of Grace. Now, as ever, human nature confides 
; rather in the former. 

I The Christian's better experience often subjects him to a 
strange misbelief. The new convert wonders why all who have 

. heard the Gospel are not melted into gratitude and love. The 
persistent impenitence of multitudes seems to belie the power 
attributed to it. The inference made by the disappointed faith 
is two-fold : 1st, The defect of the Gospel must be supplied by 
a " law-work," which must be done ever the more thoroughly as 
it seems less effective. 2dly, By way of reaction an enhanced 
deduction is made of the sinfulness and desperate wickedness 
of the impenitent. The sad surprise of the Christian is ex- 
plained by a guilt of mankind not understood before ; and the 
persuasion of this is aggravated by his own growing sense of 
God's goodness, and of man's ungratefulness. In grief and 
despair he thinks more of God's wrath, and less of His love. 

A prevalent hope of the Church respecting the general effect 
of the Gospel, contributes in its way to the severe deduction. 
It is easy to expect the conversion of the world so long as we 
look to heathen lands where the Gospel has met no signal fail- 
ures. But over against this hope the ungodliness in Christen- 
dom appals us. The obstacles it throws in the way of mission- 
ary success, dishearten us. We indulge the cherished expecta- 



370 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



tion at the expense of a desperate feeling respecting those who 
oppose the Gospel around us. We are the more ready to think 
that sinners in Zion" will " dwell in everlastins^ burninors." 

§ 12. DRACO. 

It was a lively expression of a popular orator in Athens, that 
the laws of Draco were written, not with ink, but with blood. 
And it has been the misfortune of his name to be reproached as 
if he had devised a penal code unjust for its severity, making 
no distinction of crimes because, as he said, the least crime 
deserved the heaviest penalty of death. By some writers he is 
represented as not only unwise but weak, and his code as the 
failing experiment of a lawgiver of no capacity. ^ 

But in fact Draco only wrought the legislative views of 
his time into a system. " He did not," says Grote, " meddle 
with the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle 
finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity of the 
punishments awarded. . . . But we are not to construe 
this remark as demonstrating any special inhumanity in the 
character of Draco, who was not invested with the large power 
which Solon afterwards enjoyed, and can not be imagined to 
have imposed upon the community laws of his own invention. 
He was in fact the first to introduce mitigating distinctions in 
regard to homicide. The court of Areopagus seems to have 
been forbidden, by something connected with that spot — legends, 
ceremonies, or religious feelings — to take account of extenuating 
or justifying circumstances in the taking of human life; and to 
relieve this evil, Draco appointed other courts — the Ephetce — 
to sit at other and different places." ^ These courts might be 
compared with the cities of refuge provided by the Hebrew 
lawgiver, as places of security from the avenger of blood, in an 
age when private revenge could not be done away. 

The laws of Draco, then, were not the caprice of an individ- 
ual. They were not a singular example, if compared with those 



1 Mittbrdand Gillies. 



2 Grote, Hist, of Greece, Part II. c. 10. 



THE NOTION OF TUNISHMENT AS SPECIALLY MORAL. 371 

of the Locrian Zaleuciis. They were not new. They are not yet 
antiquated ; and we shall have something to say of their recent 
repeal. They were in fact expressions of a sentiment in human 
nature itself. When society is to be protected, and law to be 
made a terror to evil doers, and crime wholly prevented if pos- 
sible, men do not think of stopping to measure and limit 
penalty. Indignation at wrong as simply and only wrong, the 
thought that he who commits one crime may commit any other, 
and the hope that the severest possible penalty may prevent the 
need of its execution, — make such a penalty appear equally 
just and merciful. And if so in human governments, wdiy not 
much more so in the divine ? 

§ 13. THE NOTION OF PUNISHMENT AS SPECIALLY MORAL. 

While the infinite demerit of sin is so often asserted, the pos- 
sibility of infinite merit is as commonly denied. Thus Fuller 
asks : " Does not the merit of obedience sink, and the demerit of 
I disobedience rise, accordmg to the excellency of the object ? " 
There must be some reason for this opinion in human nature, 
and w^e think it is found in a higher consciousness of evil than of 
good. The distinctions of right and wrong are most fully un- 
derstood by man in his sense of guilt. While w^e must hold that 
an unfailen race might have dispensed with this sad instruction, 
and think that the vanity and boundless pride of fallen men in 
their few virtues is a proof of it, yet in fact man's common ex- 
perience now is a " knowledge of good hy evil." 

The effect is, that as by the Law is the knowledge of sin, so, 
conversely, by sin is the knowledge of Law. Li its inner sub- 
stance, the Law is holy and benign ; but our condition is an out- 
lawry, and our instruction must be from without, inward. Thus 
, we come at the Law first in its outward form — hard, repellent, 
j frowning, smiting. We are out of its Paradise, and the way 
j thither is guarded by " a flaming sword which turneth every 
way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Hence penalty, and 
not reward, appears to us as the sanction of Law. Penalty is 
to us the life and soul of Justice. In common speech the terms 



372 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



"retribution" and "judgment" are almost confined to their 
penal sense ; though, happily, as we have seen, the "judgment" 
of the Holy Scriptures denotes quite as often the vindication of 
a righteous cause, and the conduct of a righteous life. 

This notion of Law as a letter that killeth and not as a spirit 
that quickeneth, — as a dead form and not as a method of life, — 
is also strengthened by an acquaintance with the poverty and 
weakness of human governments. Civil authority can dispense 
penalties more freely than rewards; it has greater power to 
curse than to bless ; it can kill, but it can not make alive. Too 
naturally we transfer the conceptions derived from its special 
capacity for evil, to the polity of the unseen world. The error 
is made complete when the divine attribute of Justice is appre- 
hended, not as the rounded and beauteous symmetry of the high- 
est goodness, but as a mere form of splendor, to be displayed as 
much in the inflictions of eternal wrath, as in the blessings of 
eternal love. 

An able writer has remarked that high moral culture, without 
the Gospel, strengthens the sentiment of justice as essentially a 
law of penalties. ^ How incomparably worse will the case be, 
when the Gospel itself — the gratuity of eternal life — is made 
a principal occasion of an eternal wrath and a deathless death ! 

§ 14. NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE EVIL. ' 

It is an open question whether man is more affected by the 
hope of pleasure or by the fear of pain. This question, we 
think, can never be answered, until it is considered that outward 
good and evil are realized as such only by an inward sense. 
And the varieties of this sense are such, in kind and degree, 
that one man's pleasure may be another's pain. The paradise 
of unthinking indolence is the ennui and torture of the active 
mind. 

Absence of pleasure is a negative evil. That this may have 
meaning and force as a motive power, requires a due activity oi 
the sentiments. If they are dormant, the impulse of pain and 

1 J. F. Clarke, Chr. Doc. of the Forgiveness of Sin, 38, 39. 



ANCHORITE CONCEPTIONS OF THE HEAVENLY STATE. 373 

cogent fear may quicken them into life, though it can not create 
them. But to the healthy and active soul the loss of good ap- 
pears as a positive evil. Want is pain, because it is felt, as 
hunger and thirst are felt. The want is clothed in living form 
and with glowing colors, by the power of fancy. Privation is 
torment, and death itself, as cutting off all hope of joy for ever, 
makes the torment eternal. Hence the Scripture drama of 
Death as man's last and greatest enemy. 

In spiritual things, this law of the quickened sense may seem 
not to hold. The carnal mind has no sense whatever of spiritual 
good, as such. Imperfect Christians and deceived professors 
keep up a decent appearance of life, mainly by dint of fear. 
Then unspiritual motives come in vogue, and are constantly 
plied, in exhortation, and discourse, and theology. If death is 
not feared, the fear not of death must be employed. The smoke 
of the pit soon beclouds the sky and shuts out the blessed light 
of day. And when no Shekinah of divine glory is seen, the 
night becomes familiar, and nothing less than an ever lurid 
flame is a sufficiently fearful hell, from which deliverance in 
death would be salvation. The darkness comprehends not the 
light, and death is made the measure of life. Hence a thousand 
such expressions as this : " An ' eternal redemption ' we regard 
as involving an equally eternal enslavement. Heaven is only 
heaven while there exists a hell. " 

§ 15. ANCHORITE CONCEPTIONS OP THE HEAVENLY STATE. 

A fallen race may be forgiven many errors in the attempt to 
divide between the proper and the perverted sentiments of their 
nature. And no wonder if they often go from one extreme to 
another. The doctrine of the highest good, too, is yet unsettled. 
Does it consist in happiness, or in holiness, or in their union ? 
What is the comparative value of each ? And what is the rela- 
tion between them, wliich makes happiness to be a support and 
reward of virtue, and leaves virtue unbought and disinterested ? 
This problem is perhaps yet unsolved, save practically, in the 
life of virtue itself. 



874 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



The ancient pliilosophy, -vvhlch abliorred matter and. pleasure 
in common, and souglit a pure empyrean of emotionless thought, 
"was a practical failure. The Cliiliasm of the early Church was 
a failure on the other side, repeated by the Munster fanatics, 
and often since. Both errors have been multiplied in the mo- 
nastic system. The question is still a vexed one. What traces 
of our common humanity will be retained in the glorified state ? 
The other problems have come in here, and we must know how | 
the great ideas of holiness, blessedness, and the hating of evil, | 
are correlated in the minds of the saints. With a just loathing 
of our vile body and its surroundings, perverted into a slight 
Manichceism, it was easy first to de-humanize Heaven, and then 
to inhumanize it. The first error appears in the conjecture that 
Heaven may " in mercy extinguish their social susceptibilities." 
The last error is found in the notion of the augmented bliss of 
the saved in viewing the state of the lost. 

§ 16. SELF-SUSPICION. 

Ever v/ith meekness and fear should the Christian give a 
reason for the hope that is in him ; whether to the sceptic, deny- 
ing Christ's power to save, or to his own conscience, in the 
inquiry respecting the integrity of his personal faith. Since 
godliness is in fact profitable unto all things, and self-deception . 
ever too easy, the disciple cannot be too jealous lest he be fol- 
lowing the Master for gain. 

But the godly jealousy may be perverted into a slavish fear. 
What means the custom long prevalent, of asking the candidate 
for admission to the Church, whether he was willing to be 
damned, — whether, if divine justice should take its course, he 
could still praise and adore his Maker ? Practically, the ques- 
tion was incongruous ; for man was created and redeemed just 
in order that he might not die. But in theory it had its value, 
as implying that God is glorious in all His doings — ever adora- 
ble, though one perish under His frown. 

But suppose a Christian, inquiring whether annihilation or 
eternal misery is the doctrine of God's word, asks himself which 



SELF-SUSPICION. 



875 



he would prefer ? Failing to answer impulsively, as thousands 
have done, with a suffrage for immortality at all hazards, he is 
overwhelmed with the surpassing fearfulness of eternal misery. 
Perhaps, in his terror, he utters an involuntary prayer to be 
j saved from such a doom. But why be startled, why shudder, if 
I there is no such anguish? Whence came so fearful a thought? 

Does the conception imply a fact, or is it a creation of fear ? 
jj And was the terror inspired by self-love, or by a sense of guilt ? 
! Has Christ redeemed him from such a penalty ? What would 
j be his feelings in view of such a salvation ? And what would be 
his feelings if such should finally prove to be the penalty, or ip 
he should finally fail of such a salvation ? 
i What wonder, if the Christian should suspect some of his 
i shudderings were quickened by the sense of guilt ? or that his 
love of happiness partook too much of selfishness and sin ? or if 
he should think it presumptuous to accredit the less fearful 
penalty ? or if he should, by a lofty eiFort of faith, accredit the 
more fearful penalty, and resolve to improve the view as best 
he could ? Doubtless many noble minds have ended the dire 
I conflict in one or other of these ways ; and the mental qualities 
j which make their opinion in fact worthless, give it special in- 
fluence over the minds of others. 

But self-suspicion, in this grave question, may take one of two 
other forms. There are many who have not attained a full 
assurance of Christian hope, and have not so felt conviction of 
sin as to reject all limitations of its guilt. They have never 
thought of themselves as worthy of eternal suffering. If that be 
I ■ the penalty of God's law, they do not greatly fear it. If anni- 
hilation is not the penalty of sin, they are pretty sure of being 
saved at last. With them, to believe the worst is to hope for 
the best. 

Others fear they shall yet fall under temptation, and fail of 
the grace of God. They need every possible motive to ensure 
their perseverance. To make the doom of the lost less dreadful 
would be to make temptation less fearful. They prefer the 
alarms of endless woe, lest they should be found tampering with 
death. 



376 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF ERROR. 



Thus many ChristiaDs; and multitudes who hope some day to 
become Christians, deprecate the abatement of any terror that 
may help them at the "convenient season." The most . aban- 
doned, who yet retain their self-love, may even most earnestly 
desire manifold " powers of the world to come," to ensure their 
eternal enjoyment at last. It is like them to do so : the reckless 
are ever running heavy risks, hoping that the larger venture 
will more surely win the prize. 

Extremes meet ; in contrast with this recklessness is offered 
the ^safe-side argument, which Christians are too prone to employ 
against the sceptic. Pilate's question is often asked in this 
form : " If the soul may die, instead of suffering for ever, what is 
the gain in men's believing it ? If the doom they fear is unreal, 
their belief does not make it true." Doubtless. Yet the truth 
of God should be preferred to error ; and the postponement of 
it to supposed expediency, and to a make-belief, as it is a sign 
of the fall, so also, we think, it has helped the progress of error 
in this great question. Aside from this gravamen, we humbly 
hope that our account has honored, even more than it has im- 
pugned, man's fallen nature. 



I 



CHAPTER X. 
I HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

The prevalent view of the divine penalty lias entered so large- 
ly into the theology of the past centuries, that a denial of its 
truth seems to involve a great change, if not a reconstruction, of 
the Christian system. This seems the more likely, because the 
view we offer has not uniformly kept orthodox company ; and 
especially because, for three centuries past, it has been much 
associated with Socinian views. And to many it will appear 
little better than Universalism, and a stepping stone thereto. 

We believe that it involves no reconstruction of the doctrinal 
system, but a change of its key note ; producing a real harmony 
where now is discord ; and immensely facilitating the defence of 
the peculiar and essential doctrines of Christianity. 

In order, if possible, to assign this doctrine its place in theolo- 
gy, let us begin by restating the advantages which we think are 
already proven in its favor. They are : (1.) A nobler view of 
the Dignity of Human Nature ; a view exempt from the hazards 
of the received doctrine ; vindicating the work of Christ as a 
real salvation, and not a mere martyrdom ; and exalting the 
salvation itself as not half negative, — a salvation from an in- 
finite evil, — but a salvation for an infinite good. (2.) A true 
Theism ; harmonizing the Sovereignty of God, in the permission 
of Evil, with the Trial and Triumph of human Faith. (3.) A 
V'.lid Theodicy. (4.) A subordination of Reason to Revela- 
tio.i ; the former being the science of the Possible or of the 
Probable, awaiting the assurance of man's best hopes by a wit- 
ness from on high. (5.) A consistent method of interpreting 
the Scriptures ; assuming as first truth of natural theology what 
is explicitly so assumed in the Bible ; taking its commonest 

32* 



378 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



words in tlieir natural sense ; relieving it of a fearful mystery 
which it does not warrant ; and offering it as a proper Gospel to 
the faith and love of men. ^ 

The reader has already observed that we oppose, no less than 
the notion of eternal evil, the so-called Ethical Theology. Its 
half-truths, its fundamental errors, and its occasions, we shall en- 
deavor to point out in the following discussions. 

§ 1. OF PROVIDENCE. 

First among the causes of the errors common to all mankind, 
— the Idols of the Tribe, — Bacon names the proneness to as- 
sume a greater uniformity in nature than really exists. The 
doctrine of an absolute immortality, and most of the arguments 
for it, are instances of this. The proofs have been mainly meta- 
physical and logical ; quite worthless, if any exception to the 
rule were allowed. Logic is never so potent as when it finds a 
universal negative. It scorns mere probabilities and assurances ; 
it will have cogent necessities. No measure of goodness, either 
human or divine, satisfies its demand. It is not content until it 
finds a nature of things. Hence we are told : " Immortality is 
as much a property and determination of man's nature as reason, 
or any quality besides." ^ It is thought to be in no sense ours, 
if it is not a law and a part of our being. In the philosophy 
even of some devout men, created existence must contain the 
power of self-perpetuation, — of surviving the creative Power, 
If that should cease. With others, God must uphold all things by 

1 We should here notice an objection stated by Dr. Hamilton, Eewards and 
Piinishments, p. 498 : " Some controvertists have urged, that so long as the in- 
fidel identified it [the doctrine of endless evil] with the Christian faith, he 
would persist in his unbelief. We aflirm, from no narrow observation, from no 
slight experience, that every attempt to cast it off he (the infidel) regards as 
a sorry shift, an ignoble evasion. He can read the doctrine in Christianity, if 
others can not." To which the author of the work on " The Duration of Evil" 
justly replies, p. 117 : " No doubt, this is often the fact. But wherefore ? Be- 
cause it is the instinctive policy of unbelievers to ' read in Christianity,' or 
rather to fasten upon it, and bring forward as inseparable from it, whatever 
they conceive (rightly or wrongly) tends to make it incredible or odious." Our 
own observation confirms this fact. 

2 Hamilton, Rewards and Punishments, p. 81. 



OF GRACE. 379 

general methods, so that the goodness or badness of the moral 
agent can neither insure, nor cat off, the eternal length of his 
days. Thus we are launched into being, and no longer the 
Creator, but Destiny, is our Preserver. We may outlive the 
goodness of Providence toward us; and, because evil Providence 
fhere is not, subsist for ever in a calamitous immortality, by 
some Improvidence mightier than the eternal Father. What 
wonder, if relief from these difficulties is sought, now in the doc- 
trine of the development of the universe from an original cre- 
ative impulse, God finishing His work in its beginning, for a re- 
pose never to be disturbed by care or prayer ; ^ and now in the 
doctrine of God as " perfect Father and perfect Providence," 
in which it is hard to see how the sins of men do not become 
God's own, and how the evils that exist are not just what should 
be, in the youth of our eternal progress. ^ 

§ 2. OF GRACE. 

In few ways has our theology suffered more than by the 
almost exclusive use of the word " grace" in its secondary sense. 
We are ever speaking of " the Christian graces," and of God's 
" grace" as if it were a particular influence of His Spirit to pro- 
duce them, forgetting the primary, common, and most significant 
scriptural sense of the word, — gratuity. Grace is a free-gift ; 
a grant of that which can not be claimed by right ; favor bestowed 
on the undeserving. It is the antithesis of claim, right, merit, 
desert, debt, payment. Thus in civil and legal relations. And 
in the higher moral relations of man to man, and of man to 
God, it is contrasted with justice ; it is gratuity allowed in the 
face of demerit ; it is favor to the ill-deserving. It is mercy. 
Its radical sense of free-gift appears in the structure of rich • 
words in various languages. It is forgiveness ; pardon ; condo- 
nation ; donative. It has a choice adverb, gratis. It is also an 
act of amnesty ; remission of debt, or sentence due. It is the 
great and interpreting word of the gospel, the best answer to the 
inquiry, what is the good news ? the first word of the evangelical 
greeting, — Grace, Mercy, and Peace. 



1 Vestiges of the Creation. 



2 Ttieodore Pai-lsier, Theism. 



380 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



The word itself is a protest against all theories of constraint 
or necessity, legal or natural, in earth or in heaven. Whatever 
is truly given, is to be given freely, and freely received. Com 
pulsion at any moment of its history is fatal to its nature. Its 
essence is the expansion, its law, the attraction, its art, the meth- 
ods — of love. And because God is omnipotent goodness and 
love, urged by no necessity and bound by no claim in the uni- 
verse, his whole creation may be regarded as his first gift, the ( 
beginning of his grace. 

But God is also just; and the principle of justice appears as 
the rule of his creation. The constitution of every being that 
he creates should be a provision, if not for happiness, at least 
not for misery. God can not justly half form a creature — with 
faculties that yield only pain. The sentient creature has a right . 
not to be made woefully imperfect. The moral being, made for 
immortality, has a right to be so formed that no derangement of 
his powers, incurred by less than infinite personal guilt, shall 
bring immortal pangs. It is just that accident or guilt, that 
impaii^ living faculties beyond the power of self-recovery, should 
bring them down to a common grave. Of such faculties each 
is due to the others. The part is due to the complementarj^ 
part. It still remains true that the whole existence is of 
grace. 

The principle may be modified by a single consideration. 
Possibly various orders of being are difierenced by the posses- 
sion of more or fewer of a certain range of faculties. Hence 
the loss of one faculty might leave a being perfect in a lower 
order. Man might, pehaps, be de-rationalized into a very per- 
fect brute. But natural history, we think, has proved no trans- 
mutation of species ; whence death, and not degradation, appears 
as the appropriate penalty of sin. 

The principle we have named, of the part as due to the gratui- 
tous whole, will explain many misstated truths in the controver- 
sies about the various measures of grace. Did God owe to man 
" redemptive grace," " preventing grace," " assisting grace," " suf- 
ficient grace ? " Acute men have offered such contradictions as 
good reasonings. Thus Leibnitz : " Since necessity is incom- 



OF GRACE. 



S81 



patible with punishment, we may infer that sufficient grace ought 
to have been given to all men." Such confusion of things that 
differ tends to annul the very idea of grace. 

The perversions of the doctrine of grace may be divided into 
three classes : the juridical, the licentious, and the fatalist. 

1. By the juridical perversion we mean that which makes 
the draft on the divine grace, to eke out the vindication of the 
divine justice. Of this, several species have appeared in our 
examination of the theodicies. The reader will have observed 
that they mostly pertain to the Arminian style of theology. 
The more Calvinistic theodicies generally avoid this error, 
because they insist on the infinite guilt of temporary sin. If 
that were admitted, the doctrine of a crisis, in the history of the 
individual if not of the race, followed of course ; and it was 
consistent for the Calvinist to style his views of the Redemption 
"doctrines of grace." In common with the Arminian, however, 
he attempted to carry one infinitude too much ; in the recession 
from the unendurable burden appeared the notion of infant 
annihilation, until now the doctrine of a crisis is nearly aban- 
doned, in the theodicy of eternal sinfulness, which involves the 
denial of grace. 

2. Of the licentious perversion there are two occasions : the 
doctrine of an absolute immortality in man ; and the doctrine of 
absolute power in God. According to the first, sin is not fatal, 
and an immortal vigor either- forbids immortal danger, or em- 
powers an invincible wickedness. Thus whether the gift of 
immortality be original or redemptive, it incurs eternal abuse. 
According to the second doctrine, which we have called Abso- 
lutism, God may do evil that good may come ; evil is a part of 
the divine economy; why should it not be of the human ?\vhy 
should there not be sin, that grace may abound ? 

3. Of the fatalist perversion there are also two occasions : 
the doctrine of Evil as an eternal necessity, in v,diatever form ; 
and the denial of human liberty. According to the former, the 
Redemption itself, the plan of grace, is not free on the part of 
God. It is of constraint, exigency, and emergency ; needful to 
Him for the avoidance or the mitigation of the supposed eternal 



382 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



evii. Various features of this perversion have appeared already; 
others will appear in the discussion of the Atonement. Accord- 
ing to the latter the supposed grace is not free on the part of 
man. It is imposed on his acceptance. This incongruity is ex- 
pressed in the old phrase, " efficacious grace ; " as if we might 
speak of "efficacious gratuity." Moreover, without freedom 
there is neither praise nor blame'; acts have no moral character; 
we may do as we please, or rather as we must. Thus extremes 
meet, and the notion of freedom wanting is as licentious a? that 
of freedom eternal even to sin. 

§ 3. OF DEATH. 

We have already noticed the early Christian doctrine of man's 
intermediate nature, — his creation neither as absolutely mortal 
nor immortal, but for life with a liability to death. This doctrine 
was held so uniformly by those who held the three most 
different opinions respecting the final destination of those dying 
impenitent, and it formed so marked a contrast with the views 
of the Platonists and of the Gnostics, that it can not well be 
explained except as a natural after-thought of the Revelation. 
But the doctrine, we remarked, is now disparted and corrupted. 
The doctrine of man's mixed nature has taken the place of it. 
The soul is strictly imm.ortal ; and although the body has been 
long regarded as subject to death by sin, and that may be 
called historically the Church doctrine, yet of late many Chris- 
tians are telling us that the body is naturally mortal ; its 
death is a debt of nature. Sin has not made us subject to 
dissolution and decay ; it has only made dissolution painful, 
and death fearful. Death would have had power over us, to send 
us to the grave, if we had been sinless; but he would have been 
our friend. His servants, corruption and the worm, would have 
done a good and a proper work, when life had begun to totter 
with age. But sin and sickness have made him our enemy ; 
he treats us no longei kindly,, but rudely; with rough hands 
he tears us, shrieking, away from many fond embraces, ere life is 
half-ended, or even fairly begun. 



OF DEATH. 



883 



We style this the Pelagian view, not invidiously, but as a fact 
of history ; and we have tried to give it every advantage in the 
statement of it. It follows, that either the eternal state is 
to be a disembodied state, that of pure spirit, as the rationalists 
hold, and the resurrection is that of spirit alone; or else 
physical dissolution and resurrection were the law of man's 
nature, and the so-called "redemption of our body" is now to 
accomplish, with whatever modifications, substantially the same 
that the law of nature would have wrought. 

In behalf of the other view, that death is of sin, v/e should 
here state that without sin man would doubtless have been 
capable of suffering, the nervous system being, as now, his 
guardian. But not his only guardian. For along with his 
right to the tree of life, man may have lost a higher instinct, like 
the intuitive sagacity which even now gives many a person of 
delicate moral sense a profound knowledge of character and 
warning of moral danger. This spiritual instinct might also 
have enabled man, better than any marvelous brute instinct, to 
thread his way through the labyrinth of this earth's physical 
dangers. Thorns and thistles might have grown naturally as 
now ; but not to the detriment of man. His art, or that which 
was better, and which would have hastened the progress of all 
art, might have avoided, or subdued them. He should have 
been "in league with the stones of the field; and the beasts 
of the field should have been at peace with him." Accidents, 
if any there were, which no sagacity could prevent, might have 
crushed the sinless body, but not the life. And ever, instead of 
death and dissolution, the psychical body should have been "swal- 
lowed up of life," by a transformation of which the chrysalis is 
the type, and the translation of Enoch and Elijah the imperfect 
examples ; since the tabernacle of God might have been with, 
or near to, men ; and the perfected state should not have been a 
removal from the sinless kindred of earth. 

Was all this originally impossible for mankind? But does 
not our choice lie between it and the woeful history of man, in 
whole or in part, as it is ? 

In the rationalistic view, while the body must crumble, the 



384 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



soul can not. And from its imperisliableness we have en- 
deavored to show that its unimpaired nature, undiseased by the 
plague of sin, and its eternal power of self-recovery, logically 
follow. The doctrine of man's mixed nature, substituted for 
that of his intermediate nature, is the supplanting of Christian 
views by Platonism and Gnosticism. 

In undesigned support of the rationalistic view, it is argued 
both that bodily death is not penal because it is of nature, and 
that the extinction of the soul could not be penal, because it could 
only be of nature. Says one : " If man be not physically im- 
mortal, if immortality be not a physical constituent and deter- 
mination of his being, — not his appanage, but his nature, — we 
may inquire, how can its forfeiture be penal ? " And he pro- 
ceeds with dialectic argument to maintain that what is not 
strictly of man's nature can not be his, and can not be lost;^ 
which by another writer is stated as a moral argument, thus : 
" Forfeiture is punishment, when it is the withdrawal of a 
right — of that which is one's own, — not merely the refusal 
to extend a gift or gratuity. . . . Human government, for 
instance, that aims at the prevention of crime rather than the 
satisfaction of justice, does not content itself with saying : ' If 
your conduct is virtuous and meritorious, we will bestow upon 
you honors and emoluments ; but if you commit crimes, we 
will simply not bestow them : will simply let you alone — 
do nothing for you — do nothing to you.' . . . The loss of 
an attainable or proffered heaven is not properly an atonement. 
For it was never the soul's right, property, or prerogative. 
The withdrawment of life was simply the discontinuance of 
a gratuitous boon, and not to be was simply not to suffer — 
a mere negation of all punishment, as well as of all favor." ^ 

Upon the dialectic or metaphysical form of the argument we 
remark that its boldness illustrates what we have said of faith, 
seeking support in a nature of things. The creation of man for 
immortality goes for nothing. And we reply, that, by parity of 
reasoning, the loss of heaven can not be penal. Eternal life 

1 S. W. Hamilton, Kewards and Punishments, pp. 437, 438. 

2 T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856, pp. 134, 135. 



OF DEATH. 



385 



must be a " physical constituent and determination " of man's 
being, or its forfeiture can not be a punishment. Exemption from 
pain must be a " physical constituent and determination" of man's 
being, or the suffering of pain can not be penal. In other words, 
God must bind himself, in our very frame and constitution, iwt 
to punish us, ere He can have power to punish us ! 

The second form of the argument is valid simply as showing 
what no one ever denied, that positive guilt deserves positive 
suffering, or that not to feel pain can not be the penalty of crime. 
But it is open to several objections. Like its dialectic cquiva 
lent, it ignores the idea of a creation for a priceless good. It 
also ignores the famous distinction between felt penalty {poena 
sensus), and the penalty of loss (poena damni). It forgets the 
weak advantage of human governments, that can let their sub- 
jects " alone," and do them no great harm. Whereas, when God 
pursues the " let alone policy," the anathema is fatal ; when He 
withdraws His upholding hand, we perish. Again, it would 
equally prove that capital punishment is capital impunity, and 
that posthumous indignities and bills of attainder are not penal ; 
for they rarely add to the pain of dying, and death is the end 
of pain. But if premature death of the short-lived body may be 
penal, why not the eternally premature death of the soul ? Fi- 
nally, the argument assumes that there can be no forfeiture of 
that which is not legally due ; thus, at a single stroke, annulling 
the Scripture doctrine of grace — the first truth of the Gospel. 
As if eternal life were a reward of virtue, which man may actu- 
ally earn, creating debts in heaven, as the sinner does in hell, 
which God can never pay. And as if an infinite bounty of 
grace could be in no sense ours, because it is not deserved, only 
offered or given ; and as if no falling short of that which God 
proffers could be loss or forfeit. Whereas the Scriptures ever 
speak of death as debt, remitted in the free gift of life. " The 
WAGES of sin is death ; but the gratuity of God is eternal life, 
through .Jesus Christ, our Lord."^ 

1 Xapiofia, in the military sense of bounty, is contrasted with u-ipuviov, the sol- 
dier's pay. So Theodoret, Erasmus, Grotius, Poole, and many cited by him, 

33 



386 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



We should here notice the argument in a recent article on 
"Perpetual Sin and Omnipotent Goodness,"^ which expresses, 
if we mistake not, a very prevalent view, and which is akin to 
the theodicy we have styled "a law of nature," though it is not 
strictly the same. After a most able statement of the proximate 
solution of the origin of evil, as incidental to the discipline of 
new-created beings, (which, however, is carried almost too far, 
so as to involve the certainty of sin,) the writer speaks of the 
perpetuity of sin very briefly, and mainly with reference to the 
sinning angels. That God should annihilate them, he says, " or 
abate any measure of the tokens of his displeasure, would be a 
weakness and a reproach to himself in his own right. He is 
only doing by the fallen angels now [?] as ever, just what is due 
to himself. He can do no less in holding them to their misery, 
and do right." 

The governmental argument which the writer prefaces to this 
statement, has, we think, been ansv/ered. The main argument 
rests, we think, on the assumption that immortal being is of na- 
ture, and that God is not bound to interpose for the relief, even 
in death, of those who sin ; rather, he is bound not to interpose. 
We might reply that if death be the proper penalty of sin, the 
judgment may be executed by forces pre-ordained, and then thei-e 
need be no interposition. But if such forces are not provided, 
then justice is as much bound to interpose, lest punishm.ent ex- 
ceed its limit, as lest it fall short of its due. This lies in the 
very idea of justice ; and the heavens might as properly fall for 
its excess as for its dereliction. Indeed, an eternal suffering 
not justly incurred by the sins of time would be calamity, rather 
than penalty, and in that view might indicate the "weakness" 
of a Ruler who should not prevent it. 

And aside from reason and Scripture, we may safely appeal 
to the natural instincts of mankind, to show that death is evil 
and may be penal. The deaf mute certainly cannot have a 
higher instinct here than the more favored individuals of the 
species. Yet such an one, telling his experience, says : " I had 

Wetstein, Valpy, De Wette, Bloomfield, Alford, and, we may add, Thompson, 
Christian Theism, p. 403. 
1 L. P. Hickok, BibUotheca Sacra, Jan. 1856, pp. 48-80. 



OF DEATH. 387 

li terrible dreams about death, which stimulated me to take some 
J possible means to save my life from being destroyed, by liiding 
<i myself under the ground. ... I had always regarded death 
I with painful terror and superstition ; it seemed to me to be an 
^1 unnatural and ghastly thing, and a sort of punishment inflicted 
on bad human beings. . . . Before I came to be educated, 
the subject of death affected my thoughts and feelings. I con- 
sidered it to be the most dangerous of all calamities, and some- 
times dreaded it. I generally thought that I should never die, 
but live for eternity." Such persons, we are told, had no idea 
I of the soul, nor of any spirit whatever ; yet these testimonies 
" might be multiplied indefinitely," and "to most of the unedu- 
i cated deaf and dumb, death is truly the King of Terrors."^ But 
j the terror is strictly that of death. Can it be less evil or less 
penal to the angels, or to men who hear the words of eternal 
life? 

We have seen the difficulties which the old Christian doctrine 
of man's intermediate nature offers to relieve. To many, who 
affect explicitness, this doctrine will appear a thing indetermi- 
nate ; a playing of fast and loose with words that certify nothing; 
an artful evasion. We wish with them no quaiTel of words ; 
let them state, in better term.s, by what condition of nature man 
is a probationary creature. Do they think his moral character 
may be undetermined, between eternal sainthood and eternal 
fiendishness ? or his moral constitution unsettled, between end- 
less bliss and ceaseless woe ? But by what rule can a quality be 
undetermined, and not a nature ? Have they found a dividing 
wall between substance and attribute? Plow can man's will 
waver on the verge of an endless destination, and not his heing'^ 
Will they say that God can not create a being capable of eternal 
existence, yet liable, under His power, to perish quite away ? 
Would this savor too much of mutability, in the creation or in 
the Creator? Then let them be consistent ; let them discard ail 
doctrine of probation ; let them say that v>'liatever icill be, must 
be ; that nothing is intermediate, undetermined, but all is abso- 



1 Notions of the Deaf and Dumb, Bib. Sacra, July, 1855, pp. 58i, 585. 



388 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



lutely fixed. Let us accept the Mohammedan fate, resign 
ourselves to a Destiny that has locked all events in adamant, 
and say, Whatever is, is right. 

Upon the rationalistic, and now fast prevailing theology, 
rather, may be fixed the charge of playing fast and loose. It | 
can not say whether there has been a failure and a recovery in ' 
the history of man. Its Fall and Redemption are a thing of 
degrees. There has been no crisis, no turning point, nothing to 
decide the future course of man beyond the capacity of self-sal- 
vation. He has, perhaps, not done quite as well as he should 
have done. But if he has run below his level, he can rise to it 
again. If he has deteriorated a little, he can improve. Mean- 
while his sufferings have not fallen far behind his derelictions, 
or if they gather in a flood, they can never whelm or destroy 
him. By a law of his being all punishment is inevitable, ana | 
remission of sins impossible. And besides this law of nature 
I here is no judgment. The passage from one life to another ia 
of nature, and yields no critical result. Every evil done or suf- 
ferred has brought its discipline of good. Through whatsoever 
devious paths. Progress is the eternal law of our being. 

Such is the Ethical Theology of our day, in its last, we think 
its consistent results. We admit its truth, or rather half-truth, 
that so long as life lasts, reward and penalty are natural and not 
miraculous. Aside from this, its results are manifest, and with 
the sceptical school they are plainly avowed. There has been 
no catastrophe in man's history. We are not a fallen race. God 
did not make man very good, and he at once begin to be very 
bad. There was no occasion why God should repent and be 
grieved at heart for the conduct of those whom he had made. 
And the book that pretends to give account of his dealings with 
and for man as fallen, is not from him. Be it so ! Then the 
new theology has its sad dilemma. It will not pretend that hu- 
man history has done honor to human nature. Either man has 
done much worse than he should have done, or God made him 
much worse than he should have made him ! 

The theology is readily allied with a denial of the divine 
Providence, and exemplifies the law of retribution which it 



I OF ORIGINAL SIN. 389 

! avers. Professing to be most ethical, it becomes the argument 
1 of those who fear no judgment beyond the present, — "scoffers, 
I walking in their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of 
j nis coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue 
as they were from the beginning of the creation." 

Those Christians who now deny the intermediate nature not 
of soul alone but of body, should not be too confident that tliey 
can silence the new theology. The Church doctrine of bodily 
death which they reject, is a lingering, languishing protest of the 
crisis in man's history. This alone shows the resurrection of 
Christ to be a crisis of redemption. And hence the argument 
of Paul for a crisis yet to come, and a future reign of righteous- 
ness : " Because He hath appointed a Day in the which He will 
judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath 
ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that 
He hath raised him from the dead." 

§ 4. OF ORIGINAL SIN. 

"With the current view of immortality the proposition that in- 
fants are saved by grace is strictly untenable, and by many is 
no longer asserted. The old theodicies of the existence and 
guilt of all in Adam, and of the imputation of his sin to all his 
posterity, are absolutist and arbitrary, annulling the idea of grace 
with that of justice. The common notion now is that infants are 
saved by their innocence, or by the so-called grace of Christ, 
which justice, however, demands ; " so that in either case their 
salvation is of debt. A sinful or criminal nature, which alone 
can be supposed to deserve eternal suffering, implies a sinful 
volition ; which in the case of infants must logically involve pre- 
existence, either chronological, as Dr. Beecher supposes (and in 
which view his argument is a consistent deduction from the pre- 
valent doctrine), or timeless and dateless, as deduced by Di, 
Muller. 

But death is a calamity wdiicli may be either penal, or may 
befall the guiltless. And all may be said to die in Adam, since 
death, either with or without personal guilt, seems to have eii- 



390 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



tered the world and to have extended to all men, through the 
first man. In this view, we may either suppose the term "sin " 
to be taken in its primary sense of failure, missing the mark 
(d(mpTta), or in a forensic way it may be taken in the old sense 
of the world " guilt," i. e. liability to sentence, and the divine 
justice is not impeached. Infants are neither strictly deserving 
of, nor qualified for, eternal life. They are characterless, in 
that they have done neither good nor evil. Yet their existence, 
with that of the race, was forfeited in Adam ; no more unjustly 
than the health, the length of life, even the existence of every 
child is put within the power of the parent. But the single for- 
feit makes even infant being, much more eternal existence, to 
be of grace. Does not the passage in Rom. v. 12 — 21, sustain 
this view ? 

We have used the phrase " original sin," as expressing the 
doctrine of native depravity. That doctrine may well be reject- 
ed with the notion of natural exposure to escapeless woe. But 
in the view that the offspring of a fallen race are unfitted for 
the original destiny of that race, the doctrine in question may 
perhaps be well reconsidered. May not the bias to evil be illus- 
trated by the ill temper of brute animals, derivable from the 
birth as personal guilt can not be ? And though holiness can 
iio more than sinfulness be transmitted, may not the fruits of 
•divine grace in the parent so modify the very nature of the child 
as to render it less fitted to die, and a more proper candidate for 
eternal life ? May we not, indirectly, infer as much from 1 Cor. 
vii. 14? 

§ 5. OF PUNISHMENT. 

The reaction from the doctrine of eternal suffering appears 
most plainly in the notion that all punishment is disciplinary 
and reformatory. Of course it is not properly penal; i. e. 
suffering incurred or inflicted because deserved. The only 
Jesert is a need, if not a right, to be reformed. The name 
'punishment" does not agree at all with the theory, and is 
liscarded by many who hold it. 

The philosophy which is apparent in the work on " The 



OF PUNISHMENT. 



391 



Constitution of Man," is in fact tlie Epicurean. The moral 
state of man is reduced to a question of good or ill health. 
The whole duty of man is to live according to nature ; and 
by nature is meant a set of contrivances for man's enjoyment. 
Penalty is only the natural consequence of violating a natural 
law. Sin is imprudence — nothing more. Obligation centers 
in self-love ; i. e. it centers nowhere ; since a man has a right 
not to love himself. Guilt is not such because it deserves 
punishment, but because pain is annexed to it. Without this 
appendage it would be as innocent as it would be harmless. 
Hence it is punishment that constitutes criminality ; and it 
follows that the criminality is not in him who suffers, but in 
him who inflicts punishment. For, with whatever plea of 
benevolence, by what right can one man disturb the quiet of 
another, and compel him to be liappy in a v/ay he does not 
choose? This solution of the problem of penalty is worse 
than a failure. It involves the frightful paradox, Summum 
ius, summa injuria, — the highest right is the highest wrong. 

The argument of one of the most able advocates of universal 
salvation is reducible to this absurdity. " Punishment," we are 
told, " is not retrospective, but prospective. Yon are to be 
punished, not because you have yielded to an evil volition, 
but in order that you may yield to an evil volition no more." ^ 
Thus one is to be punished at a venture for sins that may 
never be committed ! And if the only demerit in guilt is 
a desert of reformation, then the greater the guilt, the greater 
the desert ! The only way to avoid this conclusion is to regard 
punishment, up to the point of reformation, as of grace. " Ex- 
emption from further punishment is, witliout doubt, required 
by strict justice ; and yet, under the divine administration, 
it is highly improper to speak of that very exemption as 
a matter of right ; for such is the nature of punishment under 
the government of God, that it is as benevolent a provision 
as the direct and immediate bestowment of happiness. It is 
not only the actual communication of good, but the commu- 



1 T. S. Smith, Illustrations of the Divine Government, Fart I. ^ 2. 



392 HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

nication of good in the form best calculated to secure happiness. 
The sinner is therefore as much indebted to God for it, as he is 
for the gift of life itself, and for that constitution of his nature 
■which renders life a blessing."^ This writer, whose doctrine of 
the will is fatalist, tells us very consistently, " moral ev'l is evil 
only because it produces misery; were it without this con- 
sequence, it would cease to be an object of aversion and 
avoidance." ^ 

Now this injustice of punishment logically follows, we think, 
from the notion of an absolute immortality. Such immortality 
is either the just right of man's nature, or it is a constant 
gratuity. If the former, is it not man's right to experiment 
upon it as he pleases ? and is not every penal interference 
unjust? If the latter, then it is indeed only consistent that 
God should seek to render the gratuity a blessing ; but since it 
is to be eternal, sin is no more perilous, and punishment 
is needless, and unjust. 

But if death is the penalty of sin, then suffering may be both 
benevolent and just. Benevolent, as admonitory of an immi- 
nent danger ; and just, as related to the conduct of one created 
in God's image ; who was, therefore, more than a brute mechan- 
ism for pleasure, and thus not beneath moral law ; yet not 
divine, and thus not above law. 

§ 6. OF PARDON. 

In two different ways is the actual pardon of sin denied . 
1st, When sin is said to be punished in the person of the 
transgressor. 2dly, When it is said to be punished in the 
person of the Redeemer. 

1. It is well understood that the common doctrine of univer- 
sal salvation offers in fact no salvation. For, no one can be 
said to be saved from that to which he was never liable, nor 
from that which he actually suffers. Hence we are frankly 
told that " all who suffer future punishment endure the penalty 
of the law, and therefore, in a popular sense, can not be said to 



1 lb. Part II. c. 3. 



2 lb. Part I. § 3. 



OF PARDON. 



393 



be forgiven." The advocates for the corrective nature of 
punishment do not believe that all men will be saved, but that, 
sinners being reclaimed bv the discipline through which they 
will be made to pass, all men will ultimately be rendered 
j pure and happy." ^ And such concessions are frequently made 
i by those who regard happiness, in the sense of agreeable 
sensations, as the highest good. 

A higher form of the doctrine is offered by those who admit 
the freedom of the will, and the reality of moral character, and 
the true welfare of man as consisting not in what he feels or 
receives, but in what he does and is. They tell us that 
justification and sanctification are one and the same thing. This 
is the highest effort of the Ethical Theology — its special 
promise to purify the religion of Christ from antinomian abuse 
and corruption. In this view a man is justified only when, and 
so far as, he is made actually just. No one is treated as if 
he were just, by the remission of penalty, until he ceases to 
deserve the penalty. In the moral constitution of man every 
sentence remains in force until it is exhausted, in the compliance 
of the will to the demand of law, and in the healing of the 
wound which sin had made. The remission of sins signifies the 
putting away of guilt ; and the endurance of full penalty is 
inseparable from the process. And remission is man's act, 
it is self-forgiveness ; there is no actual absolution from God. 
He only pronounces upon the fact of amendment, and receives 
the sinner, with and on account of his moral improvement, to 
His favor. 

Here the denial of forgiveness in any proper sense of tlie 
term is complete, unless it is said that the 7necuis of sanctification, 
divine influences, and all other helps, — are a gratuity, and consti- 
tute the divine act of forgiveness. But these helps are needless, 
if the sinner retains all the faculties proper to immortal exist- 
ence, and guilt has involved no crisis of condemnation. Divine 
aid is a lavish waste, and the message of help from on high is 
not a gospel, if the sinner has an immortal vigor that must out- 

1 lb. Fart II. c. 3. 



394 



HARJIONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



live the effects of numberless past sins, and enable liim to gain 
heaven in his own right. If he has such power, he ought to 
use it : and gratuitous aid is neither compliment nor kindness. j 
And one of the ablest rationalists very consistently tells us : | 
" The divine excellency of the Christian religion is especially 
conspicuous in this, that it directs men to seek their salvation 
within their own hearts, without any foreign aid whatsoever ; 
and " the soul oppressed by a sense of its sins, ought to seek rest 
and peace only from its own powers." ^ But • if man has not 5 
such powers then there is a crisis, a sentence, which involves 
the death of faculties or of being ; and the remission of which is, 
in the fullest sense, an act of pardon. 

Justification and sanctification, then, though most closely con- 
nected, are essentially distinct. The former is the free gift of 
forfeited strength and life ; the latter is the acceptance and use 
of it. Pardon is the grant of an undeserved boon ; holiness, 
through faith, is its fruit. 

But what mean the sufferings that men do endure for their 
sins? Are they not penal? And are not those who accept 
pardon partly punished and partly forgiven ? 

We think this problem of apparently mixed punishment and 
forgiveness is solved in the doctrine of death as the penalty of 
sin, and in no other way. Pain is the law both of incipient 
death and of lingering life. Its domain is that whole shadowy 
region between full health and extinction. Some have thought 
it ought to be a condition of incipient life ; and the conjecture 
of Jeremy Taylor that it may be as painful to be born as it is 
to die, would then be true in another sense than he intended. 
But not to insist on this, every one knows that anguish is a law 
of resuscitated life. Few pangs are more terrible than those of 
recovery from freezing or from drowning; and convalescence 
from many forms of disease is full of torture. Now the econ- 
omy of pain is doubtless benevolent ; the nerves give friendly 
admonition of danger ; the conscience, of that which is worse 
than danger, — sin and the utter death. 

1 De Wette, De Jlorte Expiatoria Jesu Christi, § 27. See Tholuck, Guido 
and Julius, p. xxix. 



OF PAEDON. 



395 



Now may it not be a necessity in the nature of things that 
the recovery of life in every form should be as painful as its 
loss? that death should cast its shadow both ways; or rather, 
that a painless rescue from that dark valley should be impossi- 
ble? The conviction of guilt that follows a sense of pardon is 
often greater than that which precedes it ; could it be otherwise ? 
Can triumphant life struggle with lingering death, without 
suffering? And the long continuance of pain, either physical 
or moral, may denote the strength of either remaining life or 
death. The body may die hard because of its vigor. The bad 
man often has conscience enough to torment him long. The 
converted man too often comes slowly into the full light of life, 
and has just religion enough to make him wretched. 

Pain then is the gloomy cloud that envelops death ; appointed 
in mercy, that we may not die unawares ; strictly penal to those 
who choose death, and to those who linger near its borders ; and 
in the escape from death's pangs, inevitable, — calamitous, yet not 
penal. To all who will live, the real penalty of sin, — death, is 
wholly forgiven. And for them, the law of life, that crowns the 
right use of its powers vnth blessing, and visits their infraction 
with pain, is no modification of the pardon, because the annulling 
of that law would be rather a judgment, turning the world into 
chaos. 

Do Yv'e, then, by grace, make void the law? Eather the 
pardon of sin is the reenacting of the law, in behalf of those 
who have forfeited life. They are brought under law, and they 
share its benefits, by rescue from the outlawry of death. 

But what means the bodily death which man is still exposed 
to, and which we affirm is no debt of nature, but a fruit of sin ? 
"We answer, the Redemption has given it a new character. Men 
are wont to call it temporal death ; its true name is temporary 
death. It removes a vile and corrupted body, that we may re- 
ceive a body incorruptible. Without the Resurrection, it would 
remain our foe, By the Resurrection the enemy is conqueied 
and subdued to our service. Its spirit and power are broken; 
its form alone remains, the monument of our history, the token 
of our need. 



396 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



2. The other denial of pardon, on the ground that sin is 
punished in Christ, is thus frankly made by Stockeil : " In a 
strict and proper sense the infinite God doth not forgive sin ; for 
it is readily granted by all who are sound in the faith, that Jesus 
Christ hath given full satisfaction to the divine justice for all 
sin, and hath fully paid the debt of the Church. And if Christ 
has satisfied the justice of God for all the sins of His people, 
how then can it justly, or with propriety of speech, be said that 
God pardoneth our sins and trespasses ? Sure I am, that debt 
can never hQ forgiven, which is paid'' ^ And Maccovius, on the 
proposition that " God remits no sins unpunished," says : "This 
is proven from Ex. xxxiv. 7; Num. xt^\ 18; Nahum i. 3;" and 
that Socinus is mistaken in applying such passages to the 
impenitent, "for God does not remit the sins of the pious with 
impunity, but punishes them in Christ." ^ 

In support of this view, some will say that if penalty is just, 
the omission of it must be unjust. The transgressor deserves 
punishment ; penalty ought to be inflicted ; the demand of jus- 
tice must be satisfied. If the ofiender cannot meet the demand, 
he can be released only by the intervention of a third party. 
If sin has impaired his power, and disquahfied him for future 
obedience, his future shortcomings are an accumulating debt 
which can be remitted only on account of satisfaction by a 
mediator. 

We reply that the desei^t of punishment and its necessity are 
two very different things ; and it is only playing with words 
when w^e infer that because the sinner ov/es something to the 
law, therefore the law owes something to him. We may also- 
reject the doctrine in the words of another, " first, because in tak- 
ing away God's freedom to any virtue but justice, it takes away 
also the virtue of that ; reducing Him to a Nemesis, against 
whose fated and repulsive rigors all our warmest conceptions of 
divine beauty raise themselves in a mutiny of unbelief ; so that 
if w^e say we believe, we shall only be found to have let down 
the precept of the law just enough to accommodate our faith 



1 Redeemer's Glory Unveiled, p. 157. 2 Loci Communes Theol., c. 21. 



OF PAEDON. 



397 



in the forbidding rigors of penalty — just enough to save God's 
paternity by the laxity of his principles, after it has been lost by 
the judicial sternness of his retributions. Secondly, because it 
wholly displaces the Gospel, as a message of good news from 
heaven ; denying even the possibility of pardon or remission, in 
any sense that gives it an effective value." ^ 

But we shall not fully refute the fatal theory, unless we exam- 
me it in its sources and connections. We remark, then, that it 
seems to be implied, and properly to inhere, in several of the 
theodi-iies of eternal suffering. Manifestly, for example, in one 
form of that of eternal sinfulness ; which is worthless without the 
assumption that God has no right to destroy the rebel, defraud- 
ing his justice of the pangs of the next moment for the sins of 
the past moment. But more plainly and popularly is it involved 
in the theory of sin, as committed against the universal welfare, 
against the law of the general well being. This law, which 
guards an infinite good, is said to be "broken" by sin. And 
even when it is conceded that the ominous word is only a meta- 
phor, that the sinner is " broken" against an inflexible rule, an 
eternal rock, it is still thought that the infinite evil which he 
would do if he could, demands his eternal suffering. And there 
is much talk about the " infinite affront" to God, and His " in- 
jured majesty"; which His dignity cannot pass unnoticed. 

And that theory of the Atonement which makes the sufferings 
of Christ a satisfaction of the divine justice is commonly found in 
the closest connection with the notion of sin as infinite guilt. 
Thus Turretin, in reply to the assertion of God's right to forgive 
without a consideration, says : " God may be regarded either as 
a creditor, or as a Lord and an injured party, or as a Ruler and 
Judge. Here, then, we should take ground against our oppo- 
nents, whose primal error is this, that sin is to be regarded sim 
ply as a debt, and God as a mere creditor, who may at pleasure 
either exact penalty, or remit without a satisfaction. Whereas, 
it is certain that God here bears the character of Judge and 
Ruler of the world, whose right is that of magistracy, and who 

1 Bushnell, Christ in Theology, pp. 271, 272. 
34 



398 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



is the Gaardian and Defender of the laws." From this he pres 
entij infers that the Redeemer must be a divine being, "in 
order to take away the infinite demerit of sin."^ And Grotius : 
" Instead of God, the law of God, the moral order of the uni- 
verse, is considered as violated by sin. Hence it belongs to 
God, as the Supreme Judge, to form a plan by which satisfac- 
tion may be made, and the general harmony may be main- 
tained."^ And Anselm, by whom the satisfaction-theory of the 
Atonement was matured, reasons thus : " The law of God is 
something so great and holy, elevated above the whole visible 
creation, that a truly virtuous being would sooner let a thousand 
worlds, with all their inhabitants, be destroyed and annihilated, 
than move, were it only the twinkling of an eye, contrary to the 
will of God. If, then, every sin is an interrujDtion of the divine 
and holy harmony of the universe ; if it is, moreover, an attack 
on the inviolable majesty of God, . . . it is evident that 
since man does not give God what is justly His due, God must 
take from man all of which it is possible to deprive him, pro- 
vided that the righteousness of God may be in any measure sat- 
isfied. God must, therefore, take away every conceivable 
vestige of happiness, and doom him, according to the language 
of Scripture, to temporal and eternal death." ^ 

In view of these reasonings, we may safely affirm that, in 
human theology, infinite guilt is certain to be regarded as unpar- 
donable. It can not be forgiven gratuitously, without considera- 
tion or compensation, as a free act of divine mercy, upon occasion 
of any repentance, however sincere. Irreparable as all evil is, if 
guilt were ^mVe, the infinite God might freely remit its penalty. 
But when His infinity is regarded as occasion of its infinite hein- 
ousness, when sin is thought to be infinitely afironting, then His 
honor is not vindicated by a simple act of forgiving love. If sin 
threatens a universe with detriment, the tremulous world may 
crumble, unless quieted by some exhibition of His wrath. If 
sin is infinitely bold and wicked, repentance and pardon alone 

1 Institutio Theo]. loc. 14, §§ 9, 12. 

2 See Tholuck, Guido and Julius, p, 157. 

3 Cur Deus Homo, 1. 1, c. 21; cited by Tholuck, as above, pp. 153, 154. 



OF PARDON. 



390 



can not annul it ; there mast be somewhere an exhibition or an 
equivalent of penalty. Here, if we mistake not, is the origin of 
that theory of the plan of grace which annuls the very idea 
of grace, the commercial view of the Atonement, which makes 
the sufferings of Christ a reparation of damage done, the pay- 
ment of a debt to God. 

But we easily avoid this and all kindred errors, when we re- 
gard sin as the forfeiture of being, and the beginning of death. 
The prolonged life, the lingering delay of death, is itself a 
gratuity. God's forbearance is all that gives the dangerous ap- 
pearance of impunity. The justice of God has continual display 
in the deaths of groaning and despairing millions. The death 
of Christ was not a nev,' exhibition of divine vengeance ; it was, 
rather, a sympathy and consorting with the sons of death, em- 
bracing them for their deliverance. So far from being designed 
to secure an original claim of justice, it was a forgetfulness of 
every claim, in contemplation of a new interest of mercy. On 
the side of God there were no necessities whatever but the con- 
straints of love ; the necessities were all human. And the only 
danger attending the long drama of divine grace is told in a 
word. Men mi -take the respite granted, the space given for re- 
pentance, and the joys and hopes of a respited life, as though 
they were a proof of immortality and an earnest of its blessed- 
ness. If the common language of prayer, that of mercy are 
we now alive and in being," were transferred to our theology, 
it would correct many errors. God does freely forgive until 
grace can do no more. 

We have already endeavored at two points to relieve the doc- 
trine of the resurrection of the unjust. It may here be relieved 
of another objection, viz.: that God is not hound to punish the 
wicked in the precise measure of their misdeeds, and their resur- 
rection would seem designed only for the purpose of such retri- 
bution. Tills objection was felt by some of the Socinians, who 
early protested against ilie notion that God must inflict penal 
suffering ; and it led a ft'\v then, as novr, to deny that the unjust 
would at all live again. 

TTe reply, that as God is not bound to resent the puny shak 



400 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



ing of the sinner's fist, or the rude swagger of his tongue, but 
might forget him into eternal silence, so in fact he does not raise 
him up from death for the sake of punishing him. God never 
lifts a finger for the recovery of a right of his justice, or to save 
that attribute from fraud. He is not so poor that he should suf- 
fer for the lack of a deserved pang, any where in his universe. 
" If thou sinnest, what doest thou against Him ? or if thy trans- 
gression be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him?" "Will He 
reprove thee for fear of thee ? will He enter with thee into judg- ' 
ment ? " He condescends to treat with men in the offer of mer- ' 
cy ; never in the prosecution of His justice. He does not thus 
sue a claim or "go to law" \\ilh men. All sensible punish- 
ment is probably the conscious ebbing away of life — the van- 
ishing from view of infinitely desirable blessings, which seeing, 
the sinner " shall be grieved ; he shall gnash with his teeth, and 
melt away." And by a laAV of his being, the pangs of the second 
death may be the measure of the sins of life. 

The second death, then, we regard as not the olject or jmrpose 
of the resurrection of the unjust, but its result. The scriptural 
statements of their resurrection do not represent it as designed 
for the satisfaction of justice. It is "unto" condemnation, but 
not in order to condemnation. As life is not for the sake of 
death, and no man is born into this world in order that he may 
die, so the brief reviving of the spent life in the dawn of the 
world to come is not in order to the second death. Every form 
of man's death comes from the rejection of life ; and every pang 
marks his progress thither, or his rescue and retreat from thence. 

§ 7. THE REDEEMER. 

We decline all mercantile theories of the Atonement, not only 
because they vitiate the whole doctrine of forgiveness, saving it 
only in appearance, in the notion that what is received by one per- 
son of the Trinity is freely given by another, — but because no 
such theory is supported by the language of Scripture. No in- 
spired word do we find of Christ paying a debt to God, or satis- 
fying His justice. Early, indeed, in the history of Christianity, 



I 
I 



THE REDEEMEK. 



401 



we find a Manicli^ean notion that Satan had a claim on men as 
the heirs of death, ^vhich conld not be released until Christ con- 
sented for a while to be prisoner to the Enemy. But even this 
claim was little respected, in the forceful escape of Him who 
could not be holden of death. 

There is, however, a large class of passages which represent 
Christ as our Passover, our Eansom, made a sacrifice for us, 
and redeeming us by his blood. And m.any who discard the 
commercial view of Atonement, suppose these passages prove a 
I vicarious suffering of Christ, in such sense that his death is a 
substitute for our punishment ; not itself penal, but a substitute 
for the penalty of God's law. It is supposed also that without 
this substitute, there would have been legal or juridical obstacles 
to the pardon even of the penitent. To us this view appears to 
involve a necessity on the side of God, either in His nature or in 
the exigencies of His government, incompatible with the freeness 
of pardon ; and we are ready to ask if there is not some other 
view, which will satisfy the scriptural terms we have alluded to, 
and save the full import of the doctrine of grace. 

Now one of the most common objections to the doctrine of for- 
giveness simply on occasion of repentance, which is equally an 
argument for the need of redemption, is that repentance would 
then save us ; we should need no other Savior ; and wdiy, then 
all the outlay and expense of Christ's incarnation, death and 
resurrection ? The objection seems weighty and decisive. But 
it manifestly rests on the assumption of man's proper immor- 
tality. If sin does not bring death, then repentance would do 
all that can be done. It would be change of character, sanctifi- 
cation and redemption ; and to pardon the sinner then, would be 
simply to let him alone ; it would be to do nothing ; it would be 
nothing. 

But if sin is the beginning of death, then pardon is more than 
not to punish ; it is the arrest of punishment ; the rescue from 
death. It is no more an idle thing ; it involves a great, if not a 
divine work. The work of redemption is more than a continued 
preservation of the sinner's being. It is more than the correction 
of errors and of evil habits ; more than sound instruction. It is 

34* 



402 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 



the stauncliing of wounds inflicted by sin ; it is the healing of a 
fatal malady. It is the work of a Physician more skillful than 
all medical art or moral treatment ; of a balm which no search 
of man can discover. And Christ's miracles of healing bodily 
disease seem to have typified this higher power of restoring 
health to the dying soul. 

lie also raised the dead. But the gift of life to those who 
perish may be more difficult than creative power. The one is a 
work of might, which could have replaced the perishing race 
as easily as it was created. The other is a work not of power 
alone, but of persuasion and love. The gift of being to noth- 
ingness meets no obstacle. To gi^'e new being and life to that 
which is corrupt, perverse, reluctant, opposed, wayward and 
willful, is a work wholly against obstacles. It was needless to 
God ; yet for our sakes he has preferred the methods of love to 
those of might; a plan of recovery to that of replacement; 
condescending to restore us from the wreck and ruin which we 
were, that we might be renewed in the image of God. 

And here, it may be, we find a reason, either in the nature of 
things or in the bounty of God's love, why our rescue should be ef- 
fected by an incarnation and the work which followed it. Would 
God recover any creature of his, through much inevitable pain and 
suffering, standing aloof and at a distance ? Is not His love too 
tender, are not His sympathies too warm, for that ? Do we 
admire even the human benefactor that founds great institutions 
for the relief of woes on a grand scale, while he deigns not to 
reach out his own hand to a poor degraded fellow man in token 
of love ? And what we wish, almost require, that a human 
benefactor should do that we may love him, might not God 
freely do, to win our warmest ajBfection ? Might not He whose 
tender mercies are over all His works, and who regards, not 
without concern, the sparrow's fall, be resolved that His erring 
creatures should not suffer more in the pangs of their convales- 
cence than He would suffer with them and for them ? But if 
God would thus meet our case, it must be, perhaps, by assuming 
our form, by an incarnation in which He may reach the depths 
of our degradation, feel all our sufferings, come into our very 



THE REDEEMER. 



403 



graves with His heart of loxe and His power of life. And all 
along this course, in which through the shades of death He 
shows us the path of life, Christ may suffer as we can not, 
because we are so fallen. As the delicate, refined woman, of 
noblest feelings, fitted to adorn a palace, suffers more for a loved 
but inebriated husband than he can feel, so may we not conceive 
the anguish of the Redeemer, approaching the crisis of his 
humiliation, dying at the hands of those whom he would save ? 

In this view, Christ was " made perfect through sufferings," 
and all his pain and agony was needful that we might be reach- 
ed and won. He has so identified himself with us that our suf- 
ferings and death have become His. He has gone with us 
through all the forms of sin's penalty which we must, or which 
He could endure, that He might stand by and save us from its 
fatal stroke ; himself appearing as one of the guilty, " num- 
bered with tlie transgressors," saving us at the expense of his 
own blood. Yet his death aIo7ie was not the procuring cause, 
the judicial reason, of our salvation. When our theology stc^s 
here, it surely misinterprets the exclamation, " It is finished ! " 
and it must linger in perplexity, as did the disciples who under- 
stood not that Jesus should rise again. The entire Romish 
system of dead works is derived from this misconception of 
Christ's work. " The penalty of our sins was eternal death. 
But Christ did not suffer eternal death ; and woe unto us if he 
had suffered it!"^ Rather, in the moment of Christ's submission 
to death He gained His advantage over the Adversary, with 
whom, to use a metaphor of the early Christians, He wrestled. In 
that moment also he reached the deepest fall of man, and might 
repose in the tomb secure of the full completion of His work. 
" He died for our offences, and was raised for our justification." 
The Redemption was complete in the Resurrection. And as 
justification denoted rescue from the sentence of death, it might, 
in common with the term " salvation," signify the giving of life. 

And here we may add a closing word respecting the divinity 
of Christ. Believing that Christ was Immanuel, we must say 

1 Socinus, Praslec. Theol., c. 18. Bibliot. Frat. Pol. 1. 571; comp. 576, 665; 
— Catech. Kacov. q. 267. 



404 HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

there can be no more unfortunate argument for His divine 
nature than that so often adduced from the supposed necessity 
of an infinite sacrifice for an infinite guilt. Of this we have 
already spoken, and we need not amplify the criticism of it. 
We prefer to derive the divine nature of the Redeemer, not 
from the greatness of the evil He has removed, but of the good 
He has achieved ; not from that which He has undone, but from 
the nature and vastness of that which He has done. We are 
happy to know that Calvin himself condemns the reasoning of 
those who afiirmed that none but an infinite Saviour could re- 
deem. " Osiander," he says, betrays his folly in objecting that 
justification exceeds the power of engels and men ; since it de- 
pends not upon the dignity of any creature, but upon the ap- 
pointment of God." ^ God is not bound, so that He may not 
empower whom he will, by His commission, to bring about His 
plans. And if man's salvation were only a judicial procedure, 
— an official and outward work, then the concessions just named 
might even cut off the argument for Christ's divinity. Whereas, 
if salvation is an inward work, by which men are in any proper 
sense " born of God" and made " partakers of the divine nature," 
it seems to require a divine power. But does not Christ claim 
such power, when he says " I have power to lay down my life, 
and I have power to take it again ; " and, " I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"? 
and when we are told, " In Him was life, and the life was the light 
of men " ? And we are the more willing to ask the attention of 
Christians to the life-giving power of Christ, of which His res- 
urrection is the pledge for man's resurrection, because the fact 
is one of which the early Socinians are so full, and the argument 
is the favorite one of Athanasius. Divested of its appendages, 
may not this element of Christ's work open a way of grateful, 
practical union among believers, which alone can make an intel- 
lectual harmony either possible or desirable ? 



1 Institutes, b. 3, c. 11, § 12. Compare Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, 1. 2. c. 65. 



CHAPTER XL 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 
" Knowing-, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." 

§ 1. FEAR AND SHAME. 

As the prevalent doctrine of the divine penalty has multiplied 
future " punishments," so it has led to a frequent misquotation of 
Paul's language, as if he had said, " the terrors of the Lord." 
But the context, and the entire argument of Paul, show that his 
expression had no reference even to the doom of the lost ; much 
less to any manifoldness of their pains. He alludes rather to 
the MAJESTY of Christ, as a Lord and Judge whose favor he 
hoped to gain. Making his appeal from the poor judgment of 
the brethren in Corinth respecting himself and his motives, he 
declares that the love of Christ constrains him in all his acts, 
whether he appear to them sober or beside himself. And in this 
appeal he is confident of the approval of their better judgment, 
as well as of the approval of God. " We are made manifest 
unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your con- 
sciences." It was not the terror of condemnation that moved 
Paul to persuade men; but a feeling of reverence analogous to 
that which is due to the civil ruler, — "fear to whom fear," — but 
incomparably more elevated and ennobling ; the fear of a trust- 
ing, finite creature, before a loving, infinite Father; and which 
is best expressed in Heb. xii. 28: "TVherefore we, receiving a 
kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we 
may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. " ^ 

1 The same word ((p6f3o() is used here as in Rom. xiii. 7, and 2 Cor. vii. 1^ 
Eph. V. 21 ; 1 Pet. i. 17 ; iii. 2. For the view we have presented, see Bloomfield. 



m 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



This exposition may introduce a discussion of the practical 
bearings of the doctrine we hold. Has it power to alarm and 
convict the unconvicted, and lead them to escape the condemn- 
ing sentence of the final Judge ? We think it may be clearly 
shown that instead of loss of motive power which is feared for 
the Gospel, if eternal suffering is given up, there will be, in va- 
rious ways, a real and great gain. 

Until the heart is changed and pervaded by a holy love that 
is almost dishonored by the name of " motive," we confess the 
need of motives derived from human nature, to restrain men and 
lead them to think of Christ. Among these motives, Fear is 
one of the strongest; yet it is r. most pernicious error to employ 
it alone, or mainly, or out of its proper connection with other 
motives ; for it then becomes the weakest of all. All the legiti- 
mate forces of human nature should be employed, or the Gospel 
will fail of its proper power. 

The author of the " Conflict of Ages" has finely illustrated 
the place which his theory should hold among the practical 
forces of our theology. The "principles of honor and right" in 
the government of God seemed not to accord v/ith the supposed 
history and destiny of man ; as if the wheels of a boat were re- 
volving against each other, turning it round and round, and 
leaving it to float with the current. The machinery is misad- 
justed, or part of it is wanting. May not the doctrine of man's 
preexistence harmonize the conflicting forces, and give the Gos- 
pel power and progress ? 

The illustration may be applied to our OAvn theory with a dif- 
ference. Instead of supplying a missing wheel, we think we 
dispense with a superfluous wheel. One theory proposes an 
indefinite extension of man's guilt; the other, an abatement 
of an infinite half of his punishment. One theory proposes to 
balance evil in long ages past, against eternal future evil; the 
other would restore the balance by cutting ofl' the etei-nity of 
evil. 

But we will not appropriate the illustration to our own use. 
We prefer another, Avhich may show how the sentiment of Fear 
has been misapplied in our theology. 



! 

FEAR AND SHAME. 407 

' James Watt found the steam engine encumbered with a seri- 
ous difficuhy, the removal of Avhich has given the age its name. 
The piston had been raised by the steam admitted to the cylin- 
der, and was waiting to be returned by the pressure of the atmo- 
sphere. But how to get rid of the steam that had done its 
work ? The custom had been to reduce it by a jet of cold 
water; and here the battle of opposing forces had been long 
fought. If little water was admitted, the steam w^as imperfectly 
condensed, and the piston was returned feebly. If water was 
i dmitted freely, the piston came down with force, but rose again 
slowly, because the cylinder itself w^as cooled. On one side or 
the other, the loss seemed inevitable ; and in reducing the 
loss to a minimum, the w^isdom of a generation had been spent. 

But why, asked Watt, admit cold w'ater into the cylinder 
at all? The idea of "separate condensation" relieved the 
whole difficulty. 

Why retain the notion of eternal evil as an inseparable con- 
tent of our theology ? Is it accepted as the spent force of an 
immortal nature ? An immortality lost, yet not gone, seems a 
thing incredible, and strongly opposes the fear, which, like a 
heavy atmosphere, surrounds us. The eternal evil, like a surd 
quantity, must be reduced to some rational form, before it can 
yield to fear. Eternal suffering must appear as eternal justice 
by some theory of human guilt. At the mention of Justice, we 
are startled, perhaps subdued, if not crushed. And if we aro 
not crushed, the hope of righteousness, trying what it can do 
witii infinite perverseness, may slowly raise us again. God is 
so good, that the sinner, with a false theodicy, or wdtli none at 
all, may yet be saved. 

But the Christian wants a theodicy for the eternal evil that 
remains. Temper it as he wdll, it still challenges many doubts- 
Christian theology has labored for generations past to find the 
maximum of reason, and the minimum of doubt. This has been 
the Conflict of Ages. And the conflict could not be confined to 
the schools. Filling the minds of all classes of men, and pro- 
ducing the various forms of false theology w^e have noted, it has 
borne most heavily upon the engineer of the doctrines of salva- 



408 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



tion — the preacher of the gospel. It pursues him in every effort 
to maintain a theodicy. It pursues him in his resort to mystery^ 
and in his appeal to man's innate sense of duty. It meets him 
at the bedside of the dying, and at the funeral of the dead. 
Whether he feels it or not, it haunts him every where, baffling 
his skill, or marring his labor, in all his efforts to persuade 
men. 

But dispense with the doctrine as unauthorized, and how soon 
it appears needless. Let the wicked be regarded as of no ac- 
count, and as having no part in the world to come, and the 
powers of that world find their natural adjustment. The neces- 
sity of all labored theodicy, unheiped by a single word from 
God, is gone. Men can not now bear up against immortal fears, 
confiding in immortal strength. They may be moved by a 
" deep, convulsive dread." And the new fear, — the fear of in- 
finite loss, — is of a healthy quality. It implants no superstitious 
or fanatical feeling ; it breeds no morbid melancholy. It clearly 
recognizes, and thus may most deeply feel, the infinite goodness 
of God. Freed from every chilling gloom, and paralyzing 
doubt and deceitful hope, it may impel to the truest faith and 
the most earnest effort to lay hold upon eternal life. 

A second improvement of the engine by Watt was hardly less 
important than the first. He found atmospheric pressure too 
feeble, and requiring too nice a fitting of the machinery. He 
dispensed with it altogether, and moved the piston either way 
by steam. 

Human nature has two sides — the sentiment of Fear, and of 
Shame;— the blanched, and the blushing face. Each, in con- 
cert with the other, is powerful; sundered from each other, 
they are weak. If fear has no place, the character becomes 
mirthful and frivolous, and shame itself is lost. And without 
the sense of shame, fear passes into dismay and reckless doubt. 
And each sentiment is, in its place, and in different minds, 
stronger than the other. There are appalling fears that move 
the soul as no reproach could move it ; and there are moments 
of shame that would gladly be exchanged for months of pain. 

Now we think we have shown, in our discussion of human 



SEVERITY AND CERTAINTY. 



409 



i 

! dignity, that the notion of an absokite immortality leaves little 
work for shame. Men may indulge vice freely, if it can not 
touch the being of the soul. And they may glory in the power 
of an eternal wickedness. When, on the other hand, the appeal 
is made to the dread of eternal suffering, that is not shameful in 
itself. And if it is believed and feared, the sense of fear en- 
grosses all the other sensibilities ; one can hardly think then of 
blushing for sin. Then follows paralysis ; and we are sometimes 
astounded to hear of crimes committed, apparently under the full 
influence of a doctrine of infinite terror, that shock the common 
decency of men. 

But reduce the terror to the proper dimensions of human fear, 
and the sense of shame may do its proper and effective work. 
The abounding goodness of God, the freeness of his priceless 
gifts, the proper infamy of man's ingratitude, and of all our 
foolish sins that dwarf us into nothingness when we might be the 
"sons of God," — these things may produce an overwhelming 
shame ; and they have done so when rightly plied and relied 
on to move the soul. Too often, the appeal is followed by 
allusion to an infinite but doubtful terror, and the charm is 
broken. 

We need not repeat examples heretofore adduced from the 
Scriptures, and which might be multiplied, to show that he who 
knows what is in man has abundantly appealed to his sense of 
shame. The frequent instances of scriptural irony and sarcasm 
belong to the same argument. E. g. Gen. iii. 22 ; 1 Kings xviii. 
27 ; Zech. xi. 13 ; and perhaps Luke xvi. 9. 

§ 2. SEVERITY AND CERTAINTY. 

There is in the very nature of rational and moral being a 
limit to the sanctional power of law, and to the terror which 
may be brought to bear as a motive to reflection and duty. And 
when this limit is passed, a reaction, either of incredulity or of 
fatuity, is inevitable. Hence, of two proposed penalties, the 
more severe may be the less terrible, because less apprehended 
That which seems too fearful is likely to be unfeared. A 
35 



410 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



threatened or asserted penalty may be too dreadful to be much 
dreaded. The principle holds good not only in human nature 
but in all organic life, that when we reach a certain acme of 
motive power, all superadded force is an increment of weakness. 
Hence, when we have found the ultimatum of just and revealed 
penalty for human guilt, God, in the constitution of His works, 
as well as by the guarantee of His word, forbids us from 
persuading men by a single lisp of added terror, lest we peril 
the welfare which we seek to secure. 

It follows, that when there is reason to suspect the received 
doctrine of the divine penalty as an untenable and unwarranted 
extreme, he who proposes a milder doctrine, if it be only truer, 
instead of weakening the sanction of God's law, is really adding 
to its power. He is substituting a basis of salutary fear, for a 
covert of false security. He is promoting faith instead of mis- 
belief. And the light which he offers, though it seem at first 
not so terrifying as the old error, will only dispel mischievous 
darkness, and scatter refuges of lies. 

'■'^ Knowing the terror of the Lord," says Paul, "we persuade 
men." And though Paul does not here allude to the punish- 
ment of the lost, yet we may assume that he who " shunned not 
to declare the whole counsel of God," and who ceased not to 
warn men, day and night, with tears, but who never named 
eternal woe, — did know the actual penalty of God's law ; and 
that this penalty should be heralded and believed as a thing 
known, if it should be heralded and believed at all. And 
assuming, at this stage of our discussion, that this penalty may ■ 
be known to be eternal death and not eternal pain, we will 
apply the principle now generally admitted in human govern- 
ments, — that the certainty, rather than the severity of punish- 
ment, is the surest preventive of transgression. 

The principle is admitted in human governments. And the 
divine government can not be an exception ; for the same 
human beings are the subjects of both ; and though the re- 
vealed penalty of God's law is of course most certain, yet the 
misinterpretation of that penalty furnishes a case precisely 
analogous to a wrong enactment of penalty by man. Inter- 



SEVERITY AND CERTAINTY. 



411 



pretatioii that makes future punishment more severe or more 
lax than God has declared it, is quite as mischievous as severe 
or lax legislation among men. Error in the one may illustrate 
error in the other. If an erring statute may exasperate the 
feelings, or raise doubts of its execution, or otherwise prevent 
the ends of justice, the same evils may be wrought by a false 
view of the statute that can not err. If the one may become a 
dead letter, the other may become a dead and delusive reading 
of the letter. And all the reasons that may be urged for the 
repeal of the bad law may also be urged for doing away the bad 
interpretation. 

An illustration of these principles and facts occurs in the re- 
form of the criminal code of Great Britain in the beginning of 
the present century. Such was then the character of this code 
that the complaint of Blackstone was still just: "It is a melan- 
choly truth, that, am.ong the variety of actions which men are 
daily liable to commit, no less than a hundred and sixty have 
been declared by act of Parliament to be felonies without bene- 
fit of clergy ; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death." 
Yet, like the supposed severities of divine law, these penalties 
were all designed for the protection of society and the welfare of 
men. With the slightest abatement for the human passions and 
special interests of legislators, they all sprung from humane mo- 
tives ; their very severity often growing out of the hope that it 
might prevent crime, and with it, the need of executing the 
penalty. This argument, which had been once artfully em- 
ployed to elicit the views of a persecuting hierarchy, was as 
plausible to kindness as it was to cruelty ; and is well known to 
have been the reason why our own forefathers threatened 
Quakers returning from banishment, with death. The death of 
four persons repealed that particular law ; but what was the 
practical working of the principle ? " So dreadful a list," 
Blackstone adds, " instead of diminishing, increases the num- 
ber of offenders. The injured, through compassion, will often 
forbear to prosecute ; juries, through compassion, will sometimes 

1 By De Foo, in his " Sliortest Way witli Dissenters." 



412 PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 

forget their oaths, and either acquit the guilty or mitigate the 
nature of the offence ; and judges, through compassion, will res- 
pite one half of the convicts, and recommend them to the royal 
mercy. Among so many chances of escaping, the needy and 
hardened oifender overlooks the multitudes that suffer ; he bold- | 
ly engages in some desperate attempt, to relieve his wants, or 
supply his vices ; and, if unexpectedly the hand of justice over- 
takes him, he deems himself peculiarly unfortunate, in falling at 
last a sacrifice to those laws which long impunity had taught 
him to contemn." ^ 

And, assigning the reasons of this paradox, he says : " It is 
the sentiment of an ingenious v/riter, who seems to have studied 
well the springs of human action,^ that crimes are more effec- 
tually prevented by the certainty^ than by the severity^ of pun- 
ishment. For the excessive severity of laws, says Montesquieu^ 
hinders their execution ; when the punishment surpasses all 
measure, the public will frequently out of humanity prefer im- 
punity to it. Thus also the Statute [of Queen Mary] recites in 
its preamble, ' that the state of every king consists more as- 
suredly in the love of the subjects toward their priiice, than in 
the dread of laws made with rigorous pains ; and that laws made 
for the preservation of the commonwealth without great penal- 
ties are more often obeyed and kept, than laws made with ex- 
treme punishments.' Happy had it been for the nation, if the 
subsequent practice of that deluded princess in matters of re- 
ligion had been correspondent to these sentiments of herself and 
parliament in matters of state and government ! We may far- 
ther observe that sanguinary laws are a bad symptom of the 

1 Commentaries, b. 4, c. 1. Mitford, though he falls into the common error 
respecting Draco as a man, makes the following just remarks on his code : 
" The severity of such a system defeated its own purpose. Few would be ac- 
cusers against inferior criminals, when the consequence Avas to be fatal to the 
accused ; and the humanity of the judges interfering, where that of prosecutors 
was deficient, it followed that all offences not highly atrocious went wholly un- 
punished. The laws of Draco therefore, very imperfectly relieving the evils 
of a defective policy at Athens, in some instances increased them." — Hist, of 
Greece, c. 5, § 3. Compare Kant, Religion within the bounds, etc., b. 2, \ C. 

2 The IMarquis of Beccaria, on Crimes and Punishments, c. 27. 
8 Spirit of Laws, b. 6, c. 13. 



SEVERITY AND CERTAINTY. 413 

i 

distemper of any state, or at least of its weak constitution. The 
laws of the Roman kings, and the twelve tables of the decemviri^ 
were full of cruel punishments ; the Porcian law, whicli ex- 
empted all citizens from sentence of death, silently abrogated 
them all. In this period the republic flourished ; under the em- 
perors severe punishments were revived, and then the empire 
fell." 

The same doctrine had been maintained with great power by 
Lord Bacon, by Stiernhook, — the Swedish Blackstone, — by 
Bentham, and others. Paley had confessed it. It was now 
urged in Parliament by Samuel Romilly, with a view to the 
thorough reform of the penal code ; and its advocacy was the 
great labor of his life. 

The startling frequency of crimes, notwithstanding the severi- 
ty of the laws, was generally acknowledged when he began his 
work. But this fact was ascribed to other causes than defects 
of the penal code, and his doctrine was scouted as that of vision- 
ary enthusiasts, by nearly the whole of the bench, the bar, and 
the leading influences in Church and State. It was admitted 
that the unvarying execution of the law would be barbarous ; 
but it was urged that its frightful penalties ought to be suspend- 
ed over the heads of offenders, to deter from crime. It was also 
objected that nothing could be more acceptable to the contem- 
ners of law and the enemies of society, than the removal of these 
restraints. Those who were, or who should be, on their way to 
Tyburn, might hold jubilee, if the penalties of the law were to 
be reduced to comparative insignificance. Bad men might nov/ 
talk boldly, crime might lift up her brazen front and stalk fear- 
less through the land, and the peaceful citizen might tremble for 
his house and life, if such a reform should be effected. " The 
excitement caused by this attempt to narrow the scaffold," we 
are told, " is at this day incredible. . . . All entered the 
lists to crush the disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and demolish 
his dangerous heresies. . . . Jack Ketch was no longer to 
hang men for stealing a east off coat Avorth five shillings and six 
pence, and what would become of England! " 

We need not follow the history of the reform in its details. 



414 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



Suffice it to say, that after several years' labor, and success 
which began with the raising of the death-hmit for theft from 
twelve pence to fifteen pounds, and the repeal of capital punish- 
ment in the case of soldiers and sailors found begging without 
testimonials of discharge from the service, Romilly bequeathed 
his work to be completed by other men — foremost among them 
Mackintosh. His designs of humanity and justice were at 
length accomplished, and the panic that had been created w^as 
Ibllovved by peaceful gratulation. 

The slightest shade of rational doubt that eternal suffering is 
either a revealed or just penalty of sin, produces evils similar to 
those which resulted from this sanguinary code. Fear gives 
way to hope, when the " terror of the Lord" is made to signify 
infinite sorrows. Such a God is either unjust, and exists only 
as an object of hatred, or He is as infinitely merciful as He 
is supposed to be infinitely just, and the terror goes for nothing. 
And the alarm which is felt by multitudes of professed believers 
for a dying race, or for ungodly friends and neighbors, subsides 
into a faint hope when it touches an individual case. When a 
bad acquaintance is dead and buried, the condemning doctrine 
hardly follows him. And it has been very truly said, " We 
are all Universalists when we lose our friends." The doctrine 
of the creeds is freely argued, and asserted to be proved. It is 
often professed, but ever faintly. The expression, " I must be- 
lieve the doctrine if the Bible is true," indicates an argumenta- 
tive and inferential style of belief, not a hearty conviction ; and 
we may safely say that multitudes, perhaps the great majority, 
do not know what they do believe, and do not know what to he- 
lieve.-^ The doctrine is sometimes tremblingly preached — and 
never applied. The worst man, dying, is " left in the hands of 
a just and merciful God." We may abhor the memory of wick- 
ed men, but with reference to a future state we observe for 

1 " Imagine a creature, nay, imagine numberless creatures produced out of 
nothing, . . . delivered over to torments of endless ages, -without the least 
hope or possibility of relaxation or redemption. Imagine it you may, but you 
can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness." — Bishop 
Newton, Dissertations, No. 60. 



SEVERITY AND CERTAINTr. 



415 



them the old maxim, and say of them only good. What won- 
der, if men cast off fear, and restrain prayer ; or if destructive 
vices, and high crimes, and public sins, and threatening dangers 
abound. 

The outcry that was raised when the reform of the penal code 
was proposed, has its parallel, also, in the fears of multitudes 
lest sinners shall forget to repent, and earth become more intol- 
erably wicked, and heaven be made poorer, if men are told that 
they may altogether die. This panic sometimes hastens to ex- 
plore a supposed world of woe, and tells us that devils and lost 
spirits would exult for joy, if their anguish might come to an 
end. Be it so. To say nothing of the joy in heaven, also, if 
wickedness and woe may cease,^ we shall only reply that the 
messengers of heaven took no alarm on this score, when they 
first preached the Gospel of life and peace. The world was 
wicked enough then, if there was ever occasion for such alarm. 
Here is the picture given of it by a heathen writer. " All is 
full of criminality and vice ; indeed much more of these is com- 
mitted than could be remedied by force. A monstrous contest 
of abandoned wickedness is carried on. The lust of sin increases 
daily, and shame is daily more and more extinguished. Dis- 
carding respect for all that is good and sacred, lust rushes on 
wherever it will. Vice no longer hides itself It stalks forth 
before all eyes. So public has abandoned wickedness become 
and so openly does it flame up in the minds of all, that inno- 
cence is no longer a rare thing, but has wholly ceased to 
exist." ^ 

For this state of things — due to the persuasion of the soul's 

1 " If the blessed God should at any time, in a consistence with his glorious 
and incomprehensible perfection, release those wretched creatures from their 
acute pains and long imprisonment in hell, either with a design of the utter de- 
struction of their beings by annihilation, or to put them into some unknown 
world upon a new foot of trial, I think I ought cheerfully and joyfully to accept 
this appointment of God for the good of millions of my fellow creatures, and add 
my joys and praises to all the songs and triumphs of the heavenly world in the 
day of such a divine and glorious release of these prisoners." — Watts, World 
to Come, Preface. 

2 Seneca, De Ira 1. 2, c. 8. Compare Livy's Preface; — Tholuck, On the 
Nature and Moral Influence of Heathenism; — Barnes, Notes on Romans, ch. i. 



416 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



divine immortality, and to the reaction of despair — the Gospel 
of Life was the proper and most effective remedy. There was 
no preaching of eternal anguish ; that could have only aggra- 
vated the evil. And human nature is the same now that it was 
then. The Gospel has indeed hr.rdened, when it has not soft- 
ened, the minds of men. But the present Christendom is not 
gospel-hardened alone ; it has been hardened far more by that 
which is not the Gospel. Let the "words of eternal life" be 
told again in the ears of dying men, and let the proper infer 
ence respecting the divine penalty be understood, and though they 
may seem a new and strange sound, they will be scarcely an expe- 
riment as a cure for the evils of this day. 

Oar argument thus far has proceeded on the supposition that 
very few persons practically believe in such a penalty as eternal 
suffering. We should add a word respecting the few who do 
thus believe. They may be divided into three classes : 1st 
those already named, who regard eternal wickedness as nobler 
than extinction ; 2d, those who regard an eternal future with 
mean and trifling feelings ; 3d, those of more serious temper ; 
some of whom are alarmed heavenward, not by the eternal it- 
self, but by the very slight apprehension which they do have of 
eternity ; while others settle into a morbid state of mind, a reli- 
gious melancholy. Some regard themselves as reprobate; but 
so little does eternity move them, that we have known such an 
one who habitually composed himself to rest at night, whenever 
he was wakeful, by turning his thoughts to the eternal woe 
which he expected. 

§ 3. MYSTERY AND CONVICTION. 

The ideas of mystery and justice are not indeed strictly 
opposite ; men may believe that the penalty of sin is just, with- 
out being able to see how or why it is just. But the faet that 
the Bible never treats the justice of the sinner's doom as a 
mystery, and that the common resort to mystery is burdensome, 
shows that it is unfriendly to conviction. The awakened sinner, 
inquiring about eternal misery, is often told : Well ; that mat- 



MYSTERY AND CONVICTION. 417 

\\ 

ji ter need not concern yon. One thing is certain, — Christ has 
j I died for you, and there is a way of escape. Your duty is simply 
to believe, and be saved." As a last resort, such advice is 
pardonable; it may be commendable. But it is ever hazardous ; 
for, — aside from the danger that a sincere inquirer respecting 
God's justice may be thus driven to scepticism, or to open 
infidelity, — the most essential element of conviction is fore- 
gone and lost by such a reply. He is now invited to yield to 
God, not because His law is manifestly just, but because He is 
! at once able to execute it, and willing not to execute it. He is 
j a God of power, and He has ojQfered a reprieve from the doom 
' He has threatened. This reprieve is called a grace, and He is 
I called merciful ; but this is to assume the very point in ques- 
tion, — Is the penalty just ? And it avails little to postpone 
the question, by saying the inquirer may be convinced of its 
justice when it is too late. For, when he is said to be liable to 
eternal suffering, he is charged with deserving it; and, thus 
accused, he must be fairly convicted if jDossible. Otherwise he 
may deem himself wrongly accused ; or his plea of guilty may 
be ambiguous, or meaningless. Ambiguous, when he only means 
to say he has forfeited eternal life, or he has deserved some 
divine displeasure. Meaningless, when it is extorted by fear. 
For, to force conviction by a sense of overwhelming dangei-, is 
simply preposterous. To say that God is terrible, throws no 
light on His justice. That is the fatal resort of alarmists, which 
can produce only spurious conviction, and spurious conversion, 
and spurious hope — each a great and crying evil. 

The sense of justice is the same with conscience. It is the 
echo of the feelings to the voice of reason. More than any 
thing else it distinguishes man from the brute, and the law^s of 
its action should be most sacredly observed. The thunders of 
Sinai may hush the clamors of passion for a season ; but when 
there is no rational conviction, the heart soon goes back to 
idolatry. The hope of God's favor may elicit many fair pro- 
mises ; as the Israelites pledged themselves to Jehovah, taking 
him for a powerful and friendly deity : " Therefore will we 
serve the Lord ; for He is our God." But this was only the 



418 PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 

other side of the illusion. " Ye can not serve the Lord," says 
Joshua, " for He is a holy God." He can never be served 
aright, — He can never be worshiped with godly fear, until 
the conscience, apprehending His justice, avails for more than 
the dread of His power. 

The sense of justice, as distinct from the dread of undefined 
evils, is among the most effective of all restraints. The slave, 
emancipated from the brute terror of the lash, shows it in a 
manly and respectful fear of law. When crime has been 
committed, it appears in a new form, as a sense of guilt, driving 
the criminal to confession. Such an evil conscience is the 
foreshadowing of punishment, — the v/ounded spirit, which no 
man can bear. But when conscience is neither convicted nor 
convinced, one can endure all things. Whence the story of 
Prometheus, doomed to ages of cruel torture, yet bearing up 
nobly, and defiantly : 

"My miseries, be assured, I would not change 
For thy gay servitude ; but rather choose 
To live a vassal to this dreary rock, 
Than lackey the proud heels of Jove." 

With the same feeling, hundreds, not of the worst of men, have 
said that if eternal suffering were the penalty of God's law, 
they would scorn salvation from it, and endure it by way of 
protest. 

Conscience has been called the worm that never dies. Those 
who believe thus ought to understand its laws exceedingly well, 
and direct its immortal energies with exemplary skill, ere it 
should torture for ever in vain. But it will be better for us all 
to leave fire and worms to their work of death, while we 
seek to rouse the stupefied consciences of mortal men into the life 
of repentance and love. 

§ 4. ETERNAL DEATH IS ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

We have already shown that death, as the literal loss of life, 
is punishment. If this be true, then by parity of reasoning the 
loss of life for ever is eternal punishment ; and if logic could 



ETERNAL DEATH IS ETERNAL PUNISH?.! ENT. 



419 



carry conviction of truth, we might add nothing more. But we 
ought here to point out an ilhision, and a delusion, tliat makes 
the assent to this proposition too often reluctant; and also to add 
the suffrages of two or three who have been guides of Christian 
thought. 

The illusion is this : Eternal death has been understood to 
mean undying pain ; and compared ivith that a death that 

I knows no life would he an infinite deliverance and an eternal 
salvation. But, by parity of reasoning, eternal suffering itself 

I in a certain degree would be eternal salvation compared with a 
greater endless pain. If we regard things simply as they may 
be conceived or imagined, we have at once a sliding scale on 
which a most terrible woe may be a little thing compared with a 
more tremendous evil. We dispel the illusion when we inquire 
what is the just penalty of sin that actually awaits the im- 
penitent. If that is indeed death, then life is indeed pardon 
and salvation. 

But there are suffrages. AVe offer three names, each one as 
good authority as man can be for man. The younger Edwards 
says : " Endless annihilation is an endless or infinite punishment. 
It is an endless loss not only of all the good which the man at 
present enjoys, but of all that good which he would have enjoy- 
ed throughout eternity, in the state of bliss to which he would 
have been admitted, if he had never sinned." And he goes on 
to show that the loss is not only calamitous, but strictly penal. ^ 
Isaac Watts, speaking of eternal death as the third and worst 
form of the threatened penalty of sin, says : "But who can say 
whether the word ' death' might not be fairly construed to extend 
to the utter destruction of the life of the soul as well as the 
body, if God the righteous Governor should please to seize 
the forfeiture? . . . And why might not the threatening 
I declare the right that even a God of goodness had to re- 
I sume all back again, and utterly destroy and annihilate his crea- 
' ture's forever ? " Such punishment, he had already said, " is in 
some sort commensurate to the infinite evil contained in sin, as 
it is a loss of all blessings for an infinite duration, that is, for 



1 Reply to Chauncy, Works, I. 80-82. 



420 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



ever and ever." ^ His was a just remark : " Nor do I thiiik we 
ought usually, when we speak concerning creatures, to affirm pos- 
itively that their existence shall be equal to that of the blessed 
God, especially with regard to the duration of their punishment." ^ 
Hermann Witsius, whose " Economy of the Covenants" will 
not be suspected of new fangled notions, says : " I know not if 
it can be determined whether this eternity ought necessarily to 
consist in the punishment of sense, or whether the justice of God 
may be satisfied by the eternal punishment of loss, in the anni- 
hilation of the sinful creature." Again: "Whether it be neces- 
sary that God should continue for ever the sinful creature in a 
state of existence, I own I am ignorant. May it not, in its 
measure, be reckoned an infinite punishment, should God please 
to doom- man, who was by nature a candidate for eternity, to 
total annihilation, from whence he shall never be suffered to re- 
turn to life? I know God has now determined otherwise, and 
that with the highest justice. But it is queried, whether agree- 
ably to His justice he might not have settled it in this manner : 
If thou, O man, sinnest, I will frustrate thy desire of eternal 
happiness, and of a blessed eternity ; and on the contrary give 
thee up to eternal annihilation. Here at least let us hesitate, and 
suspend our judgment." ^ 

§ 5. THE SECOND DEATH. 

God's right to forgive the penitent without a satisfaction of 
justice, includes the right to forego the infliction of pains upon 
the unrepentant; provided only that they do not receive the 
reward of righteousness, in eternal life. Hence we may regard 
the pains of the second death as endured, not simply for the 
satisfaction of justice, (though they are such,) but rather as a 
result of unbelief. As life is not given to the sinner for the sake 
of his death, so neither is his resurrection for the sake of his 
dying again. The sufferings of every death are the agonies of 
departing life. We will therefore attempt a portraiture of the 
horrors of the second death, not to cater to a feeling which is 

1 Kuin and Recovery, q. 9, prop. 5 ; q. 11, § 3. 

2 World to Come, Discourse xiii. § 2. 8 b. 1, c. 5, § 41, 42. 



THE SECOND DEATH. 



421 



foreign to the spirit of the Gospel, but to meet Ji frequent ob- 
jection. "\Ye are told 

" There is a death v/Iiose pang 
Outlasts the fleeting breath ; 
O ! what eternal horrors hang 
Around the second death ! 

And it is alleged that those horrors would vanish, if the sec- 
ond death should actually kill. Perhaps so, to those who are 
already brutish, mindless, half-dead. But the Gospel is never 
a Gospel, until men are persuaded to think what they lose by 
rejecting it. The message of life is that which makes death 
most fearful. And to lose an infinite blessing, even by a pain- 
less death, — a gentle and easy exit from the universe, — might 
be only so much the more horrible. The noble mind scorns the 
mockery of repose at such a moment. It would not be in keep- 
ing with the scene. The agony of a wakeful death is preferred 
to the fatal slumber of the opiate. To know and feel that one 
I is bidding an eternal farewell to God and His creation, is better 
than not to know it. 

But this, though more honorable than a brutish insensibility, 
can not be enviable. The pain of death may be measured by 
the vital power and capacity that is extinguished. And as the 
soul far out-measures and out-numbers the poor faculties of the 
body, with its high intellectual, aesthetic, and moral susceptibili- 
ties, its death may be a manifold anguish, a thousand deaths in 
one. 

This anguish is not relieved, if we take the scriptural expres- 
' sions as metaphors denoting a literal agony of the dying soul. 

To affright the careless, we need no gloomier pictures than of 
j God's fierce anger as burning, devouring, consuming, tearing in 
! pieces, grinding to powder, and the like. And if we take into 
account the accompaniments of the second death, in the judg- 
ment scene, the alarmist shall not lack matter for eloquence, 
though he paint that scene as the prelude of the soul's execution 
and funeral. That terrible dramatic poem of the day of judg- 
ment, the " Dies Irse," the chanting of which in full orchestra 
36 



422 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



has produced madness, contains hardly an expression that im- 
plies the eternity of the final anguish. 

To the argument that sin against God is infinite guilt, we 
have already replied that by parity of reasoning all punishment 
proceeding from God is infinite. For if sin can be committed 
against the whole of God, (and how else can it be infinite ?) it 
may be punished by the whole of God. Here offers an exhaust- 
less magazine of terrors, — an argument of the dreadfulness of 
death under the frown of God, that may ever accumulate, and 
never culminate. . The smile of a child, nay, even the innocence 
of the lamb, is a torment to the guilty soul. Much more the look 
of an injured friend — the sorrow of a dishonored parent — the 
displeasure of a sovereign, which would give a sharper pang, if 
he could also be all that a parent is. Yet these reproachful 
glances of human eyes — more terrible than all bodily pain — 
would be so many nothings, compared with the displeased look 
of Him who is all love, and all else that can make His smile 
worth more than worlds, or His frown more intolerable than the 
pangs of expiring nations. Why do they who hear that the 
Prince of Peace is coming to reckon with the nations, cry out 
to the mountains and rocks, " Fall on us ! and hide us from the 
face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of 
the Lamb ; for the great day of His wrath is come, and who 
shall be able to stand"! Need they be immortal, to be so 
fearful ? 

But it is said, if the soul dies, this agony, terrible as it may 
be, will end in a most welcome relief It may all be braved, if 
it shall land the sufferer for ever beyond the reach of pain. It 
is the eternity, and not the intensity, of future misery, that 
makes it most fearful. 

The objection sometimes takes a bolder form, — " the greater 
the suffering, the greater the relief." And we have waited to 
hear the proper conclusion — " the greater reason it should 
never end." So, to avoid the remotest appearance of clemency, 
the terribleness of punishment, either in sharpness or in long 
duration, would be made the plea for its perpetuity ! A fallen 
creature's natural and divinely implanted dislike of pain is made 



THE SECOND DEATH. 



423 



a law of contraries, to compel a God of Love to unceasing in- 
flictions ! 

But aside from this reduction to a horrible absurdity, one 
point intended by the objection is to be fairly considered. Time 
I must enter as an element into all finite views of a dreadful pen- 
' alty, unless out-ruled by the reflection that the judgments of an 
I infinite God may not be impeded by our tardy conceptions of 
j! time. When the arm of Omnipotence shall smite the soul, or 
the eye of Omniscience shall wither and consume it with the 
fever of death, it is a puny objection, that His Justice may de- 
fraud itself by its lightning speed. God's power is infinitely 
greater than all our conceptions of Time and Pain. 

But we admit the element, as a law of human thought. And 
here we are confronted with instances that have frequently oc- 
curred, of a life-long experience crowded into a moment of time. 
In a fleeting instant of expected death the events of many years 
have recurred, — as a grand cavalcade, or a funeral procession, 
— for a spectacle of the soul. Who lias not, in a short troubled 
! dream, passed days of sorrow ? Who can not understand the 
wish of Clarence ? — 

" I would not spend another such a niglit, 
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days, 
So full of dismal terror was the time." 

And who knows that the lost soul may not, by some law of its 
nature, so transcend the laws of time and space as to apprehend 
a certain boundlessness of its woe? '"The wicked shall see" 
the happy lot of the righteous, " and shall be grieved ; he shall 
gnash with his teeth, and melt away." AVho knows that in the 
hour of dissolution the thought may not wander through the 
eternity that eludes his grasp, and reckon, against the burden of 
his guilt, the eternal weight of glory that was offered in his ran- 
som ? Do we not find the indications of a psychological eter- 
nity, as the natural and dreary pilgrimage of the expiring soul? 
We have been told of the sinner's " own eternity," in the 
guilt of his life ; is it not more real, in the visions of his death ? 



424 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



" But the sense of relief, when death comes at last." We 
hardly need to reply : there can be no sense of relief. The 
light of life gone out, the expired soul can never know that it 
has escaped from pain. The bold transgressor may fix his 
thoughts upon it now, heedless of all that intervenes ; but he 
will forget to think of it then. To waken from a troubled 
dream, and to know that it was only a dream, is an exceeding 
joy ; and with transport do the friends of one dying in delirium 
note a gleam of returning reason ere he breathes his last. But 
the soul's death knows no waking ; its maddening fever ends in 
no sweet moment of rest. It can never feel that its woe is end- 
ed. The agony ends, not in a happy consciousness that all is 
past, but in eternal night, — in the blackness of darkness for 
ever ! 

We may conclude this argument in the eloquent words of an 
opponent. Says Dr. Hamilton, of those who hold this view : 
''They have erased eternal from that scroll of lamentation, 
mourning, and woe. But let them not be too elate ! They 
may not have adjudged the whole question. What have they 
disproved ? What alternative has relieved them ? Their 
cheerless resource is, annihilation ! Have they pondered it 
well ? A creature strictly immortal, strictly perishes. He is 
cut off. He is blotted out. An interminable capacity for great- 
ness and felicity is destroyed. A flame, which might have 
burnt with all the ardors of piety and love, is extinguished. The 
portion of an infinite good is snatched away. Do they not 
think, in common with many who generally agree with them, 
that the perished soul was convertible to this ? Why is it not 
spared? Is it mercy which shortens its misery, or justice 
which shivers its being ? With them most assuredly rests the 
-chai'ge, commonly, and not invidiously or unjustly, raised against 
us, of following sin with eternal ban and loss. What do we 
more than they ? They, in the destruction of immortal suscep- 
tibilities, write the eternal doom of sin! They, in the depriva- 
tion of eternal happiness, show how the sinner is eternally treat- 
ed and condemned ! They mark, in the sudden wreck of im- 



FAR AND NEAR. 425 

1 

mortal hopes and powers, that only an eternal sentence can sat- 
■ isfy ! They go further than others : they do not wait : they 
I precipitate the 'endless aioard 1 " ^ 

§ G. FAR AND NEAR. 

To the doctrine of the intermediate state as one of detention 
j it is often objected that it postpones unduly the future retribu- 
\ tion. If, on the other hand, it is a state of retribution, after 
which the wicked perish in the second death, it is supposed to 
i make an unjust, if not remediless, difference between the pun- 
ishments of the lost. Each objection only illustrates the vast 
importance which men attach to the first and nearest portions of 
\ a. future state. The same feeling appears in the great desire of 
\ Romanists to shorten the pains of Purgatory for themselves and 
their friends, wdiile they think almost nothing of the eternal 
j woes to wdiich men are so often anathematized.^ 
; There is a reason for this. Evils are dreadful according as 
I they seem near to us. They are frightful when they are at 
hand, confronting us, towering up before us, imminent, threat- 
ening. Far away, they appear small. But the eternal can not 
be near to us. The central period of eternity — if we could 
conceive such a moment — must ever be infinitely distant. Of 
eternity, we can grasp only the feeblest beginnings, to make them 
appear real. All beyond must ever be a vast negation. When 
the eternal shall be far advanced, — and yet ever remote, — we 
can only have begun to dream of its import. Hence eternal 
jl suffering must and does now appear to men, faint, shadowy, un- 

1 Rewards and Punishments, pp. 444, 445. 

" " Of all the painful spectacles to be witnessed on the Continent, in connec- 
I tin'i with this subject [of purgatoiy], the most heart-rending is that of weeping 
j ID .rhers and w eeping sons. Almost every day you may see, as you pass the 
j bc;:"tiful and tasteful church-yards, on one grave a mother weeping and pray- 
j ing, with a fervor worthy of a purer and holier cause, that the soul of her de- 
parted son or daughter may have repose from the torments of purgatory; and, 
on another grave, the son or the daughter praying for the soul of the mother, 
or the widow praying for the repose of her husband's spirit." — Gumming, 
j Lectures on Eomanism. 

36* 



426 



PARADOXES OF PENALTY. 



sub.stantial. This is one reason why the doctrine is fo easily 
believed.^ 

Hence it is better, after the style of the Scripttires, to repre- 
sent the penalty of sin as a near, pressing, overwhelming danger. 
Whether the intermediate state is one of unconsciousness or of 
all-consciousness, the second death joins hand upon the first; this 
is the prelude ; tlmt, the tragedy. It hastens apace ; it comes as 
a catastrophe, and hope is gone for ever. The Scriptures do 
" precipitate the endless award." The Vv^icked " shall be sud- 
denly destroyed, and that without remedy." 

§ 7. WRATH AND LOVE. 

But the terrors of the second death, though multiplied a thou- 
sand-fold and brought ever so near, are not the Gospel, and 
have no converting power. It is, rather, a serious problem, — 
which the prevalent doctrine can not solve, — how He v>'ho de- 
lighteth not in the death of the sinner still loves those who perish 
and is in no sense their enemy. Those who hold the prevalent 
view, we say, can not answer this question ; for if the lost suffer 
for ever, it can not be said that God's " tender mercies are over 

1 Of the vain attempts to convey some suitable impression of "vvhat Eternity 
signifies, which would fill many volumes, the following is perhaps the best 
example. Sir J. Bowring tells us : " The Buddhists, whose contemplations lead 
their thoughts into calculations of infinite ages, as connected with the incarna- 
tions of the Divinity, have sought to convey notions of eternity by images in 
which the fancy is made the handmaid to speculations the most adventurous. 
For example, they teach that, in order to estimate the ages needful for all the 
transmigrations which are preliminary to the creation of a Buddha, you are to 
fancy a granite rock of enormous extent, which is to be visited once in a 
hundred thousand years by a celestial spix-it clad in light muslin robes, 
which should just touch the rock in flitting by; and that until by the touch 
of the garment, Avhich must remove an infinitesimal and mvisible fragment 
of the stone, the whole stone should be reduced in successive visitations to 
the size of a grain of sand, the period of the transmigrations of a Buddha 
would not be completed. Again, so many must have been those transmigra- 
tions, that there is no spot on earth or ocean which you can touch with the point 
of a needle where Buddha has not been buried in some form or other during 
the incalculable period of his transitions from one to another mode of his 
existence." — Kingdom and People of Siam, I. 292, 293. 



WRATH AND LOVE. 



427 



all His works." It may be said that He pities them, or that He 
employs them for some greatest good ; but not that He is good 
to them, or that He loves them. But if they die, though the 
problem still has its difficulties, we think there is a view of 
tlieir death which is truly evangelical, yet even more terrible 
than the one just presented. The anguish of that death may be 
sharpened by the sense of God's unchanged goodness; the 
" wrath of God," which can not be a distinct attribute, may be 
felt as a last despairing sense of His love. JSTot " love in dis- 
guise," but love freed from all the encumbrances of doubt which 
the sinner has interposed between himself and it. 

The " wrath," jealousy," " repentance," and other like emo- 
tions ascribed to God in the Scriptures, are, in the heart of man, 
mixed passions ; imperfect, if not sinful. Man's anger is indig- 
nation, coupled with fear ; without fear, it may pass into con- 
tempt. In God's " anger " there is no fear ; therefore He may 
" laugh " and " mock " at the puny rebellion of men ; yet He 
never despises them. Man repents, with sorrow and change. 
God " repents," grieved at heart for the sins of men, because He 
loves them ; but He changes no plan. Man's jealousy is his 
love, in doubt of the fidelity of its object. In God's "jealousy" 
there is no disquieting doubt or suspicion — only love, reproach- 
ing His people as unfaithful to Him, while He is as a husband to 
them. ^ 

In all these metaphors there is a method of compensation, — 
each correcting some error that might be deduced from another. 
Thus their apparent conflict evolves their harmony, and clears 
God of imperfection. And they are explained by being referred 
to His love, as their common source and centre. Hence we may 
say it is love that malces the various moral attributes of God to he 
emotions. This is specially apparent in the instance of His 
anger. That is His justice, commiserating the guilty. If now 
He were simply just. He might — with the firmness that fits a 
human judge for an unwelcome duty — pass sentence and exe- 
cute judgment, and the stroke should be scarcely felt. It is as 

1 Isa. liv. 5. In this view idolatiy is commonly called adultery. 



428 



PARADOXES OF TENALTT. 



when a man weary of life throws himself upon the track of a 
railway. Justice might destroy him, and the train receive 
scarcely a jar. But mercy sounds the alarm, stays with mighty 
struggling the speed of the moaning train, and sends anxious 
fear through a hundred hearts. And the groaning delay shows 
the almost resistless power to be overcome, that a forfeited life 
may be saved. If the engine could feel, its feeling would be 
indignation restrained by love. Such is divine wrath — Omnip- 
otence, lield back by compassion ; the power of justice, displayed 
in the restraint of love. " What if God, willing to show His 
wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long- 
suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to drstruction ? " 

Now, such is human nature, that the notion of simple justice 
is often agreeable, though it may bring pain and death. Men 
may endure and even cherish a sense of God's condemning jus- 
tice, if He is simply just. This is the principle of the Stoic 
fortitude — proud to pay one's heaviest dues, to gods and men. 
With the persuasion that they were reprobate, men have soothed 
and quieted themselves to sleep, by meditation upon their expected 
doom ; but the thought that God loves them they can not endure. 
So an undutiful child — whose parents' anger is a type of God's 
■ — can often bear their displeasure simply as just, but not as an 
emanation of love. By mistake or wrong friends are alienated. 
With doubts and misgivings and many half-resolves the aliena- 
tion continues, and mars the happiness of a life. What more 
terrible discovery than to learn at last that a mistrusted or in- 
jured love has never languished ! The assurance that love had 
changed to hatred would be an inexpressible relief. 

Such examples may illustrate the final disappointment of sin- 
ful man, regarding God as his enemy, or careless of the contin- 
ual tokens of His love. Life is His constant gift ; and the pos- 
sibility of a second death grows out of a redemption from the 
power of death, by which the life of human kind is respited and 
repaired. Suffering itself is the lingering of reluctant death. 
The groaning and travailing in pain of the whole creation 
grows out of the long delay of justice ; God seeking to recover 
and restore a lost world whose life was forfeit from its early 



WEATH AND LOVE. 



429 



youth. With all the suffering man cherishes the life, yet dis- 
trusts the Giver offering eternal life. The clav of crisis arrives; 
and then all the sinner's doubts, misgivings, cherished excuses 
and delusions, give way before the conviction that from first to 
last God has onl}^ loved him. The strength of his life has been 
wasted on follies ; his faculties are all perverted ; he has no 
capacity for eternal joy. It only remains for him, under the 
full assurance of God's unchanging goodness, to perish. It 
would be a relief to believe that God had been ever cold and 
indifferent ; it would be a comfort and a joy to knoAv that God 
had hated him, and that all his own ingratitude and hatred were 
just and right ; it would ease his agony even now, if God could 
seem to resent his ingratitude, or to be stirred with any weak- 
ness of man's indignation. But that can not be. To suspect that 
God assumed a frown, kindly to disguise His tormenting benig- 
nitv, would not quiet the sinner's distress. Conscience, echoing 
the accusation that God is love, would dispel all such illusions. 
Bv a law of his being, impelling him to know the worst, though 
ignorance were bliss, — a law, perhaps, intensified, when man 
desperately resolved to '"know good and evil,"^ — the dying sin- 
ner will not believe that God ever has been or ever can be less 
than infinitely good toward all His creatures. The Redeemer's 
tears over lost souls are the burnings of their anguish, the bit- 
terness of their cup. The lost sinner has rejected infinite loveli- 
ness ; he has departed from the Source of all life and blessing ; 
he has sundered the cord that united him to God. The sense 
of its parting is the pang of his death. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE MISSIONAHY SPIRIT. 

" A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping ; Rachel 
weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because 
they Avere not." 

§ 1. VICARIOUS IMMORTALITY. 

The tribe of Benjamin, refusing to surrender the men of 
Gibeah to the demands of justice, was in danger of becoming 
extinct. The other tribes, repenting of their solem-n refusal of 
their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites, came together, 
and " hfted np their voices and wept sore ; and said, O Lord, 
God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there 
should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel ? " 

But the mother, whose life had been yielded in the birth of 
Benjamin, must grieve far more than the brethren whose indig- 
nation had so nearly destroyed the tribe. And though dead, she 
is represented in prophetic vision as the chief mourner on this 
occasion. Her sorrow is inconsolable ; and her wailing is heard, 
in fancy, above the wailings of all the people. From Ramah 
comes the most piercing cry of anguish ; — Rachel, weeping for 
her children, refuses to be comforted, because they are not. 

And so sad was the sorrow, that it is deemed the most suita- 
ble type of the agony of many mothers, bereaved, hundreds of 
years after, by the murderous hand of Herod, seeking the life 
of the infant Jesus. 

But why such lamentation ? The slain Benjamites had ended 
their earthly toils ; the babes of Bethlehem were saved from a 
thousand ills of life. And in neither case do the mourners say 
aught that betrays 



VICARIOUS IMMORTALITY. 



431 



' The di'ead of something after death, 
That imdiscovered country, from whose bourne 
Ino traveler returns." 

They are grieved only because brethren or children have ceased 
to be. They have, then, ceased to suffer. What cause for their 
sorrow ? 

Such reasonings would indeed be insulting to a mother's love, 
and to the common love of man for his kind. But it is proper 
to state them ; since they are identical with objections sometimes 
urged against the notion that the lost may cease to be. It is 
actually feared that Christians will not sorrow much, or be very 
anxious to save the perishing, if they may altogether perish. 
Hence we must inquire whether the mitigated doctrine of the 
divine penalty leaves a valid motive for evangelical and mission- 
ary labor. 

At the outset we may reply that the Christian, though he 
expected himself to perish utterly, would show no greater love 
for man than Rachel did, if he should weep and pray that his 
fellow men might share with him a temporary spiritual life. 
For all who truly live, desire that their life may continue ; in 
the being of others, if not in their own. And in the patriarchal 
age, when a personal future life was scarcely revealed, parents 
did look upon their children as the most natural continuation of 
their own existence. In the multiplying offshoots of their own 
lives they found their best assurance that they should not alto- 
gether die. In their posterity they found what may be called a 
vicarious immortality. Hence the Jewish proverb : " The child- 
less are but as the lifeless." Hence also the peculiar love of off- 
spring, which appears in the Mosaic law respecting the raising 
up of seed to one who had died childless ; upon which one 
ancient writer remarks: "For since a dim hope only of the 
resurrection was yet given, they represented the promise of that 
which was to come by a kind of mortal resurrection, that the 
name of the departed might ever remain." ^ In the same view 
Athenagoras says that man " begets children, not for the benefit 
of himself or kindred, but that, in the existence and longest pos- 



1 Africanus, Ep. ad Aristidem. c. 2; Routh, Reliqq. Sacr. II. 117. 



432 THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 

sible continuance of his posterity, he may in their successive f 
lives relieve the evil of his own death, and thus, as it were, ij 
immortalize that which is mortal." ^ ! 

The Hebrew love of offspring was in the case of Rachel 
enhanced by adventitious provocations ; but her ambitious rival- 
ries may have been far from selfish. Her bosom companion P 
inherited a promise that in his seed should all the nations of the % 
earth be blessed; and every noble sentiment— every feeling ^ 
tliat impels us to honor the mother of Jesus as blessed among s 
women — must also impel Rachel to desire a i^art in that life- 
travail, that immortal honor. She might, then, as a pious hand- 
maid of the Lord, utter the prayer, Leave me not childless, lest 
I die. 

§ 2. THE MATERNAL CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH. 

The author of the " Conflict of Ages," assuming that the 
Redemption of man is a crisis in the history of the Universe, 
has extended the notion of the Church as the heavenly bride to 
include her relation to God as the instructress of new-created 
minds in all ages and in all worlds. In this eternal union and 
cooperation of the Church with God, in which the Church ap- 
pears as the fostering mother of an ever extending family of the 
children of God, — it is thought we may find the key of the 
entire moral system (p. 508). 

This view, we think,_ gives the earthly Church too vast an 
honor. But it may truly represent the feeling by which she is 
impelled in her efforts to extend the range of God's kingdom. 
As both human parents have one and the same affection towards 
their children, — so the Church, as the spiritual mother of the 
regenerate, is impelled by the same love that sways the divine 
bosom. And when Zion is represented as travailing in birth 
and bringing forth children, we must regard her as desiring 
them for the same reason that God does, — sympathizing with 
the feelings that moved Him to the creation and redemption of 
man. The members of the true Church are co-workers with 
God. His emotions impel their hearts. His plans are their 



1 De Resiar. c. 12. 



THE MATERNAL CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH. 433 



plans. Their labors are the complement of Ilis work. Their 
j sufferings fill up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ. 
' Their joys are the same with his, in his mission of grace to 
mankind. In their proclamation of his love they show their 
! own love also, which he has kindled in their hearts. In short, 
! creative goodness, redeeming love, and the missionary spirit, 
j are essentially the same feeling. They are the beginning, the 
,1 continuing, and the completing, of the same divine work. They 
are diversities of operation by the same loving Holy Spirit that 
worketh all and in all. 

It follows that if from first to last God has encountered no 
emergency, — if the Redemption was designed no more than the 
I Creation to forestall an infinite evil, — if there has been no ex- 
' igency of infinite justice,— no cry of anguish that might move 
the stones to pity, — if rather, God, when able to raise up from 
the stones children to Abraham, has preferred the methods of 
grace to the methods of power, and His love is constrained by 
J no necessity but that of love, — then we should expect the 
i Church to be moved only by the same love ; and we greatly 
err when we seek to move her by any of those terrors. If in 
I Christ " were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," 
if His glory was seen as that of the only begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth, in order that the lavishing of divine 
attractions might win the regards of men, then the Church, with 
her bridal array, should win mankind by the methods of love, 
not of terror. But in fact the entire display of God's goodness 
and grace may be regarded as a divine suitorship ; in which the 
wooing party is above all need of the return of love, — where 
the love is rather an overflowing fulness, asking the love of men 
for their own sakes. Thus in the quaint verse of Herbert ; 

" Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure, 

The Trinity and Incarnation ; 
Thou hast unlocked them both. 

And made them jewels to betroth 
The work of thy creation 

Unto thyself in everlasting pleasure." 

37 



434 



THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



God has created intelligent beings that He might not be alone 
in His blessedness. And because His love is free, yet sincere, we 
may suppose He would rather not be, than be alone blessed. 
But to suppose that the refusal of His love leads Him to make 
the sinner ever wretched, is to suppose that He is needy. 
Rejecting this view, let us not again imply it, by any false view 
of the love of His Church for His creatures. 

But the love of one who would rather not be, than be alone 
happy, is a parent's love, one which the true Church shares with 
God. This was the love which Moses expressed in his prayer 
for Israel : " Yet now, if thou wilt, forgive their sin ; and if not, 
blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." 
This was the love of Jeremiah, who would that his head were 
waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he might weep day 
and night for the slain of the daughter of his people. And the 
love of the Church is often represented as a maternal passion. 
Unfaithful to God, and forsaken of Him, she becomes a widow, 
mourning her barrenness. Returning to Him, she is no more 
called a forsaken one, but Hephzibah, and Beulah. " For as a 
young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee ; and 
as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God re- 
joice over thee." But the same instinct -which desires a spiritual 
seed and travails in birth for souls, makes the Church jealous 
for their salvation, as the mother is anxiously careful for the 
safety of her children. A mother's fear is the alarmed form of 
love. So that of the Church. As the mother is frantic, when 
her child is in imminent danger, so the Church is moved with 
terror, when the Adversary would destroy the objects of her 
love. But, like the mother's love, the just and salutary fear of 
the Church is never a panic terror for what the soul may suffer, 
but for what a redeemed creature may lose. 

§ 3. THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE. 

No human motive can endure, or can suffice for the various 
exigencies of duty, which is not truly healthful. The painful 
emotions can act only temporarily. They are made painful, be- 



THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE. 



435 



cause, like the sentiment of anger, they were designed for ex- 
traordinary occasions. If they continue to be cherished, they 
become diseases ; their action is irregular and capricious ; they 
exhaust the energies of the mind ; they fail of their purpose in 

! the hour of need. They will be specially inefficient when they 
are indulged for the morbid pleasure they give. Those who de- 
light most in tales of romance or in the tragic scene, and they 
who feed their thoughts with the forebodings of melancholy, or, 
— as some have done, — with the anticipation of endless sorrow, 

j do least of the work of life. 

If alarm for the heathen as exposed to eternal woe were need- 
ed to move Christians, we should expect frequent notes of such 

(i alarm in the Scriptures. We find nothing of the kind, but the 

! very opposite. "I put thee in remembrance," says Paul to 
Timothy, " that thou stir up the gift of God, Avhicli is in thee 
by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the 
spirit of fear ; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 
And though Paul, the model missionary, in one field of his labor, 

' ceased not by the space of three years " to warn every man day 
and night with tears," yet this grief was felt not for any woe of 
the lost, but for the evils that threatened the Ephesian Church 
itself, by grievous wolves entering in, not sparing the flock. 
And he never uses the term " salvation " in the negative sense 
it so often assumes when men are warned to escape an infinitely 
fearful doom. The " great salvation " found its entire value in 
the inestimable wealth that was offered to men. Christ had be- 
queathed untold riches to all who would accept them. The ex- 
punged ordinance of man's condemnation was converted into the 
title deed of an eternal inheritance. Each man may now be re- 
garded as a minor heir, for whom a heavenly citizenship and es- 
tate are waiting. We regard with a peculiar feeling any child 
that inherits a large estate. We take a livelier interest, if the 
inheritance was unexpected ; or if the heir was a child of pov- 
erty ; or if he is not yet apprized of his good fortune ; or if, 
through heedlessness, or doubt, or waywardness, the estate may 
be forfeited ; or if it is a kingly fortune and rank, for which he 
should be fitted with the education of a prince. But all these 



436 



THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



occasicas of interest are combined in the ease of man as a sub- 
ject of the Redemption ; with an infinite difference in favor of 
those ^,7hose possession is eternity, and wliose rank, that of kings 
and priests unto God. 

Now, who shall tell the good news of such an heirship, and 
inform the subjects of it in the faith and feelings that behove 
them ? So far is a panic terror from being an allowable motive 
to this duty, that our human nature, and our liveliest common 
interest in man, can not furnish the exalted feeling that be- ' 
comes so high an office. The true herald of this gospel will be ' 
diffident, and will ask " who is sufficient for these things ? " not 
because man has an immortality that may be a living death, but 
because he may receive, or may fail of, an infinite good. He 
who would herald this Gospel aright, must feel the same divine 
love that has bestowed the gift. He must share the divine mag- 
nanimity that devised the bequest, and the long-suffering that 
still grieves for those who will not receive it. He must feel the 
sense of superhuman wealth. He must be himself one of the 
princes of the kingdom, if he would not be a beggarly, inept, 
chattering messenger, telling that which dishonors the King, or 
making the good news seem false by his ignorance of its high 
import. He who is truly furnished for this work will not need 
to reckon the value of the Redemption by the immense number 
of the saved, just because each human being, as an object of 
Christ's love, has worth enough to engage his undivided interest. 
And this may explain a paradox of Christian benevolence. We 
find in the life of Christ and in the apostolic letters a marked at- 
tention even to the temporal wants and interests of individual 
men ; while the wants of men counted by masses are little no- 
ticed, though they are a common theme of modern missionary 
appeal. The reason is, human nature itself 'has received a new 
value in the Redemption ; and the divine estimates of it are 
those of magnitude rather than of multitude. 

To the question. What is the true missionary motive? we may 
then give a concise answer in the words of another • " The ele- 
mentary expansive principle of Christianity is not natural 
benevolence, enhanced and spiritualized by religious considera- 



THE CAMPAIGNING SPIRIT. 



437 



tions ; — it is a sense, bestowed in an absolute manner from on 
higli upon whoever receives it, of that which is ineffable, and for 
the conveyance of which language has no terms or powers ade- 
quate, but which yet it indicates and affirms, as when we hear 
of the 'unsearchable riches of Christ,' — a vrealth available 
beyond the utmost reach of the all-grasping desires of the 
human mind, and available, as for the individual soul, so for all 
human spirits. Whoever thus feels, first exults for himself, as 
rich indeed ; yet the consequent feeling follows so closely upon 
the first, that the two seem one ; and it is this second impulse 
which we assume as the tPcUE missionary rudiment, — the 
earnest, the burning desire to make known to all men ' that 
which passetli knowledge.' " ^ 

§ 4. the campaigning spirit. 

Peter the Hermit could easily raise an army to rescue the 
lioly sepulchre from the power of the infidel, because many 
human passions answered to his appeal. Hatred to the Saracen, 
the love of adventure and of exploit, and, when numbers began 
to be rallied, proneness to go with the multitude, — enlisted 
thousands who cared little whether the Nazarene were the 
Christ, or an impostor. All these passions could work under 
the banner of the cross, and for the alleged interests of the 
Church. A monstrous perversion, indeed; yet how few sus- 
pected the delusion ! In the Romish societies for the Propaga- 
tion of the Faith the perversion . is more easy, because the weap- 
ons of that warfare are not so carnal ; corrupt motives might 
here work more fatally, because more subtly. 

The danger of this corruption does not lie in such an age, or 
in such a form of the Church, but in human nature itself. A 
Protestant name, therefoi-e, gives no security against it. Where 
the missionary feeling is gone, it may still be easy to create mis- 
sion funds, and send forth missionaries, and the Church may ea- 
sily persuade herself that she is doing a glorious work, when the 
glory of that work is departed. Those who go to heathen lands 

1 1. Taylor, V/esley and Methodism, p. 173. 
o7* 



438 



THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



and come personally in contact with degraded yet redeemed 
men, will, if they have felt the unutterable love of Christ, rely 
upon that alone to sustain them, and v/ill rejoice in their proper 
work. But if other motives are relied on by the Church to 
support them, they will find a strange incongruity between the , 
missionary spirit abroad, and the missionary effort at home. 
Serious differences will arise between them and their supporters, 
not only respecting their own work, but respecting various inter- 
ests and rights of humanity. It will be found that those abroad 
and those at home are laboring for different ends, and can, per- , 
haps, no longer work together. 

All the dangers we have intimated will be the more serious 
if the Church rests her hopes on the conversion of the whole j 
world to Christ. " The conversion of the world " — is a rally- i 
ing cry that appeals too strongly to man's fondness for great 
enterprises. The ambition to do great things, though it be only 
as humble instruments, and the love of success in some great 
undertaking, which is one of the most seductive forms of idola- 
try, — these feelings may enlist thousands in the work who have 
no genuine love for Christ. Sectarian rivalry and all the pas- 
sions connected with it will swell the numbers of those who give 
from sinister motives. When the day of trial comes, and some 
cherished hopes of success are disappointed, these numbers will 
fall away, like the hosts of Gideon's army ; and the great vic- 
tory that is to be achieved, must be won by a few faithful fol- 
lowers of Christ, " faint, yet pursuing," sustained by the spirit 
of Christ, whereby they are Ilis. 

Now we venture to say that the prevalent doctrine of tlie des- 
tiny of the lost aggravates the dangers we have named. For, 
as soon as the terror it inspires for the individual has spent its 
force, it may be reproduced in behalf of the great numbers, the 
millions of benighted heathen, supposed to await that doom. 
Then comes in the notion of an eternal kingdom of the Adver- 
sary, rivaling, in the number of its recruits drawn from this 
3arth, the kingdom of God. The tragic interest of the "immor- 
tal conflict " of which Plato speaks, is enlisted. AVill that be a 
drawn battle ? Will God's victory be only in the majority on 



I 

I THE CAMPAIGNING SPIllIT. 439 

I His side ? Then we have left us only the boast of numbers, 
which is the great power of the Enemy. For to make a show 
I of numbers, is his forte. This is the illusion of the vox populi, 
vox Dei. This explains the power of the Romish Church, calling 
herself universal, and the attraction of all great and ancient 
sects. And just so soon as God's kingdom and the worth of the 
I Gospel are estimated, no longer by the measures of magnitude, 
1 but by the comparative multitude of the saved, — then the hoped 
for victory is a real defeat. The hosts whom Satan can muster, 
! though they be so many nothings, acquire respectability, and the 
j warfare against him becomes a campaign that may be too like 
I the political and military campaigns that make up so much of 
1 human history. 

Before Christ came as the great Missionary, to supercede all 
lower motives by the example of his simple love for man, the 
chosen people were often addressed as a nation, with special 
national interests. Thus the Psalms of David, and many of the 
I prophetic utterances, are redolent of the campaign. But the 
I Banner is never displayed in the Gospels or the apostolic epistles. 
Never until the " thundering legion " gave Constantine an excuse 
for converting the emblem of Christ's ignominious death into a 
military ensign, did Christians think of the "banner of the cross." 
jj And never until then did they regard numerical success in their 
heralding of the gospel. But the times have changed. " Those 
incalculable revolutions," says the writer just cited, "which have 
carried the hum.an mind so far away from the ground of anti- 
quity, have given rise to modes of thinking for which we shall 
in vain search the inspired writings, as furnishing either the 
, warrant or the example. It is a fact noticeable indeed that the 
' modern mind — the world-wide philanthropy of these latter 
j days — finds its like of sentiment and expression, and of ani- 
I mation, much rather in the prophetic poetry of the ancient dis- 
' pensation, than in the writings of evangelists and prophets. The 
books of Isaiah, David, Daniel, are the modern missionary treas- 
ury of texts, fraught with hope." And, speaking of an eminently 
successful preacher of the last century, he adds : " The averment 
is boldly hazarded, that unless he had, by mere sympathy, cauglit 

1 



440 



THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



the feeling and fallen into tlie style of those around him, Whit- 
field, as a platform orator, at a modern missionary meeting, Avould 
have felt himself out of his place, and quite unprovided with 
materials that might mingle homogeneously with the speeches 
going before, and coming after, his own. Might it be imagined 
that Whitfield and St. Paul would together stand apart, on such 
an occasion — rejoicing indeed as listeners to the Report; but 
both inclined rather to hear than to speak, and both of them per- 
plexed as much as delighted ? " ^ 

§ 5. A TEST OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 

The Christian, burdened with the gloomy thought of an eter- 
nity of evil, may and ought to feel an inexpressible relief, a lial- 
lowed joy, when he shall believe that God can utterly destroy 
Satan's kingdom without detriment to his own. But if one's 
feelings go beyond this, and, freed from a most appalling fear 
in behalf of one's fellow men, the love of Christ does not con- 
strain to devoted effort for their salvation, the evidence of Chris- 
tian character is gone. The former hopes of such an one were 
a bondage of fear, and a delusion. He was a stranger to the 
spirit of adoption, that delights in doing the will of a Heavenly 
Father for a redeemed human family. 

For, the unconverted man, and even the grossly wicked man, 
might be impelled by frantic terror to labor and even to pray 
that his fellow man should not suffer eternally. Such a fear 
addresses every man's emotional nature. And though it should 
move one to spend his life and to suffer death to rescue a fellow 
creature from eternal suffering — however just, that would be 
no proof of love to God or love to man. It might be only the 
instinctive sympathy wit^ which the brutes bemoan the sufferings 
of their kind. It is essentially without moral quality ; it is sim- 
ply a part of man's constitutional nature ; drawn out to its ut- 
most tension, and employed in the severest labors, it can never 
make one a Christian, or prove one to be such. "Though I 

1 Wesley and Methodism, p. 177. Compare D. T. Taylor, Voice of the 
Churcii, showing the modern opinion to be of recent origin. 



A TEST OF CHRISTIAN CHAKACTER. 



441 



give my body to be burned, and have not charity, I am noth- 
ing." 

And it is a serious question whether mukitudes, alarmed first 
for themselves and then for others, have not received the Chris- 
tian name merely in consequence of this alarm. When the 
terror has spent its force, it has given way to some vs^orldly and 
secular, but respectable mode of feeling toward the race of man- 
kind; or it has passed into dead indifference, and the subjects 
of it show no signs either of Christian or philanthropic vitality. 
They have a place among the children of life ; but they are the 
offspring of fear and the children of death. 

Here is another paradox. As it is easier to convict a sinner 
of finite than of infinite guilt, so it is easier to convict a Christian 
of neglect in destroying his fellow man, than in leaving him to 
eternal misery. Why is it so hard to convince the Church that 
millions of souls are every year ruined and lost by her remiss- 
ness ? The reason is, she doubts instinctively whether God has 
staked the salvation of millions from endless woe, upon her 
fidelity. She will not deny a vast responsibility; but that 
responsibility must have limits, both in the numbers that she 
can reach, and in its relation to the pains of the lost. If these 
pains are eternal, Christians will unconsciously evade responsi- 
bility for them, by a resort to the theodicy now most preva- 
lent. They may plead guilty to the beginnings of eternal woe ; 
but its eternity will be regarded as the result of an eternal sin- 
fulness, for which the lost alone are responsible. The Christ- 
ian's accountability for sins to be committed a thousand ages 
hereafter, is too indirect and remote to be at all felt. Or if, 
according to another theodicy, he regards the sinner as deserving 
eternal woe by the sins of this life, then the infinite heinousness 
of sin appals and perplexes him. How can he be responsible 
for so stupendous a guilt? What can he do or say to dissuade 
a man from infinite sin ? Must it not defy his utmost skill and 
power? What wonder if many theologians have said that 
human preaching can have no more adaptation to convert the 
sinner, than the blowing of rams' horns had to throw down the 
walls of Jericho ? In this view the Christian may wait for a 



442 



THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 



special miracle to produce an infinite change, and think himself 
guiltless if it is not wrought. 

Bat let it be understood that the sinner is simply a candidate 
for endless existence, and the charge of guilt is easily made out 
and brought home to the consciences of those who neglect his 
welfare. Many, indeed, perish under the blaze of the clearest 
light, and with heaviest condemnation. But it is not so with all.' 
The masses are ignorant of Christ. " The people are destroyed 
for lack of knowledge." And on the part of most, — of those 
who "perish without law," — there may be barely guilt enough 
to justify their perishing. Our guilt may be greater than theirs, 
if they are not saved. In a Christian land, men may be sorely 
tempted by. adversity to distrust God's goodness ; they may 
scarcely know the name of Christ, or the work he has done for 
man. Acts of kindness done to them in His blessed name 
might lead them to faith and love. And for the heathen, 
Christians are, to the extent of their light-diffusing power, 
wholly responsible. To them, deluded and corrupted by many 
false hopes and gloomy fears, the Gospel will be indeed tidings, 
— news of glad things. Without Christ's words of life they 
despair and die. 

*' Shall we whose souls are lighted 
With wisdom from on high, — 
Shall we to men benighted 
The lamp of life deny? " 

We have read of a Caspar Hauser, shut out from the light of 
day and from all knowledge, until at the age of a young man he 
was still in pitiable infancy. His sufferings during that night of 
years were a trifle not to be thought of. But the crime of his 
exclusion from a proper human existence was called by a new 
name, the " crime against the life of the soul." At the bar of 
conscience, there may be a conviction of like guilt, for the care- 
less or wilful failure to save those who are liable to perish. 
Kedeemed already by Him who came to seek and to save that 
which was lost, they wait for the after-work which He has com- 
mitted to His people ; and the neglect of this work is blood- 
guiltiness. 



GOSPEL FOR THE HEATHEN. 



443 



We need not dwell here, to say how the Gospel should be 
brought home to the minds and consciences and hearty accept- 
ance of men. We will only remark, that when a simpler the- 
ology shall have done away the necessity of argumentative 
preaching, to smooth over the Gordian knots of the present sys- 
tem, preaching itself may become a different thing. It will not 
only be more practical, but it will consist more in Christian 
practice. The Christian life, — the living epistle, — the kind 
word and deed wrought into gospel by the love of Christ, will 
assume its due importance. The sermon will still have its place, 
as an instruction of those who believe. The Gospel will become 
a common ministration of all who believe ; a service of love 
rendered by Christians wherever scattered, "preaching the word." 
Such, if we mistake not, was the Church in its infancy ; and such 
it will be in its maturity. 

§ 6. GOSPEL FOR THE HEATHEN. 

" You talk of hell ; " said a heathen in reply to the discourse 
of a missionary; "hell — it is just the place we wish to go to!"^ 
What could now be said, to a Hindoo whose own doctrine of 
metempsychosis had made him too familiar with the thoughts of 
future suffering? Which was more like a gospel to him — the 
news of salvation, or the threat of damnation ? The case was 
indeed unusual; but it illustrates what we have said of human 
nature as often preferring justice to mercy, — wrath to love. 
The goodness" of God — most awful when least disguised — is 
that which strikes the deepest dread. " They shall fear the 

I Lord and His goodness in the latter days." 

I But the heathen more frequently takes exception to the doc- 
trine of eternal misery, as an encumbrtoce to the Gospel, making 

I it inferior to his own religion. A priest of Siam once asked a mis- 

j sionary "how long his God tormented bad men in a future state?" 

I and when answered, "for ever" — replied: "Our God torments 
the worst of men only a thousand years ; so we will not have 

, your American God in Siam ! " And how poorly prepared is 

I 1 Missionary Herald, Nov. 1849, p. 392. 

I 



444 



THE MISSIONAKY SPIRIT. 



the missionary, with all the extra-scriptural theodicies of the 
schools, to meet one such blunt objection to the religion he offers. 
The story is told of a smart Japanese, convinced of the folly of 
his old worship, and hesitating v,'liat Christian communion he 
should join. He could accept neither the Roman, nor the 
Lutheran, nor the Calvinist faith. With the latter he found 
fault for its doctrine of predestination, which he found so absurd 
that, he was tempted to hold fast his idolatry more firmly than 
ever ; for he protested that those terrible decrees of absolute 
predestination and reprobation made God appear as a cruel and 
inexorable tyrant, who had no greater pleasure than to see His 
creatures suffer eternally. This idea seemed to him so frightful, 
and so contrary to the general law of all the religions of the 
world, — that vice should be presently punished and virtue re- 
warded, — that he was astonished that men endowed with reason 
could adopt a principle so irrational, and so little conformed to 
the idea they would have cherished of God as a being infinitely 
good and merciful. ^ Such is the heathen's objection to the 
Calvinistic side of the difificulty. But how poor a relief does 
the missionary afford, when he tells him that eternal suffering is 
beyond God's power to prevent. And though he should be con- 
vinced that Christ can save him, still how heavy and gloomy a 
cloud of mystery is left if the Gospel reveals no end of evil ! 
The heathen will have a right to echo what the Christian theo- 
logian has said, — it is "dark, dark, dark, and he can not dis- 
guise it." 

But the heathen is concerned with the doctrine of eternal suf- 
fering, not for his own sake alone. If he is saved from that, what 
company shall he find in heaven ? and whom shall he not find 
there ? The author of " Hypatia" gives the following narrative 
as warranted by fact. " Wulf died, as he had lived, a heathen. 
Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved all righteous and noble 
souls, had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. 
Adolf acted as one of the sponsors ; and the old warrior was in 

1 Description de I'lle Formosa, Amst. 1705, pp. 281, 282. The Japanese at 
length joined the Anglican Church, in whose articles the doctrine of eternal 
suffering does not appear. 



GOSPEL FOR THE HEATnEN. 



445 



1 the act of stepping into the font, "uhcn he turned suddenly to 
the bishop, and asked him where were the souls of his heathen 
ancestors ? ' In hell,' replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew 
back from the font, and threw his bear skin cloak around 
him. ' He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his 
own people.' And so he died unbaptized, and went to his own 
place." And even now, the missionary can not tell him that he 
will not find some sad consolation of society, even there. 

The Church has yet to learn, in behalf of a dying v,'orld, what 
the Gospel is. Men need not be told that they are sinners, 
already condemned by the law of God. That they may know 
well enough ; tliey feel it daily ; they doubt it only when con- 
demnation is made to mean what they can not believe. Let the 
message of pardon and life be once more understood as a plain 
word, and it may again be said : " How beautiful upon the moun- 
tains are the feet of Mm that bringeth good tidings, that publish- 
eth peace ; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth 
salvation ; that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth ! " And the 
Church, whose exotic theology has brought gloom and strife 
within and scorn from without, may forget her anguish, her 
reproach, and her desolations. " For thou shalt break forth on 
the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the 
Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear 
not ; for thou shalt not be ashamed ; neither be thou confounded; 
for thou shalt not be put to shame ; for thou shalt forget the 
shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy 
widowhood any more." 

38 



CHAPTER XIIL 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 

" I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing ; therefore ' 
choose life." 

We have already remarked that the Christian must not only 
believe that God is just, but must also seek to know how and why i 
He is just in doing thus or thus ; otherwise one can not perceive I 
wherein justice consists, or, in many cases, decide what things are 
just to be done. 

For the same reason the Christian must not only beheve that 
the actual system of the world is the best system, (the evil that 
is in it being no scheme of God's,) but he must desire to under- 
stand why it is the best system. He must wish to know wherein 
the highest good consists, or what is the best gift that God can 
and does bestow upon his intelligent creatures. Such an answer 
to the old inquiry respecting the Summum Bonum is implied in 
the duty which Paul enjoins : to " approve the things that are 
excellent." As faith ever leads on to reason, and as we admire 
the holiness, justice, and goodness of God, then, whatsoever 
things are true — honorable — just — pure — lovely — of good 
report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, we 
must think on these things. As the Book of Job is a continuous 
theodicy, so that of Ecclesiastes is a continuous inquiry respect- 
ing the highest good ; of which the ancients, we are told, had 
two hundred and eighty-eight different theories ; and so prone 
is the mind of man to have some opinion here, that theories are 
unconsciously offered even by those who pronounce the whole 
question a vain speculation. 

The question is not only the natural sequel of a theodicy, but 
it is specially pertinent forr us. We have undertaken to oppose 



LIFE THE TRUE GOOD. 



447 



not only a prevalent theology which makes eternal evil a part 

ot] or incidental to, the best system, but also a counter theology 
j which asserts the highest good of the world to consist in the final 
i salvation of all men. Believing that such will not be the prom- 
i ised " restitution of all things," we may inquire why in the divine 
i economy it should not be so. And on the human side of the 

question we shall encounter the prevalent opinion of a remnant 
I of virtue, a " good in all," into the genuineness of which we do 

well to inquire. 

§ 1. LIFE THE TPtUE GOOD. 

Besides the general tenor of scriptural language in which 
"life," "eternal life," is made to be Heaven's best gift to man, 
and the burden of a glorious Gospel, we have remarked various 
expressions that denote life to be the greatest good, and death 
the greatest evil. The Jewish proverb, " All that a man hath 
will he give for his life," speaks the natural sentiment of man- 
kind ; for life is the primary condition of all happiness, the 
casket that contains every good, and which is freely emptied if 
itself may be saved. 

But the casket can not be literally emptied. Life can not 
exist without the continued action of its powers. They are only 
suspended, in sleep, trance, and death ; these are kindred, as 
shadow and substance. And vital action must be either pleas- 
urable or painful ; pleasurable, if normal, healthy, or in accord- 
ance with the laws of life ; painful, if irregular, disturbed, or 
diseased ; and then it looks toward death. When the casket is 
emptied quite, it is destroyed. 

We venture the proposition, then, that the scriptural equiva- 
, lence of " life " and " blessing " is philosophically true. Life is 
the primary quality of all joy. It is more than a metaphor, 
' when we speak of the cheerful and gladsome as "lively." And 
when we compare the active and passive forms of happiness, — 
those in which action is given out or taken in, — we not only 
find that the former are higher, but the latter give happiness only 
by means of reciprocal action, and in the measure of that action. 



448 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



The passive joys are grateful only as forms of reaction, such as 
riding and resting ; or as preparatives for action, such as re- 
freshment and repose. When these are sought as an end, for 
pleasure's sake, their life and their joy is gone. Here also is 
explained the paradox, — that vigorous action, though it costs 
effort, is happier than indulgent ease. 

And in this view it is truly said : " Plato has profoundly 
defined man, ' the hunter of truth:' for in this chase, as in others, 
the pursuit is all in all, the success comparatively nothing. - ' Did 
the Almighty,' says Lessing ' holding in his right hand Truth, 
and in his left Search after Trutli, deign to proffer me the one I 
might prefer, — in all humilit}-, but without hesitation, I should 
request. Search after Truth.' We exist only as we energize ; 
pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded energy ; energy is the mean 
by which our faculties are developed ; and a higher energy the 
end which their development proposes. In action is thus con- 
tained the existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection of 
our being ; and knowledge is only precious, as it may afford a 
stimulus to the exercise of our powers, and the condition of their 
more complete activity. . . . ' Where there is most life, 
there is the victory.' " ^ 

Without going into a severe analysis of a question which to 
many will seem to possess the importance only of a definition, 
we may then say, the inquiry, " What is the highest good ? " 
resolves itself into another, — What is the highest form of life ? 
May we not classify the various forms of life, — sensation, mo- 
tion, thought, free will, virtue, faith, love, — as lower and higher, 
(though they be interlinked, and are found in varied relations 
to meaner and loftier things,) and may we not show the last to 
be largest and highest, and thus man's truest good, as it is God's 
first demand and His own best gift ? 

§ 2. SENSATION AND MOTION. 

The flowers and the trees often seem happy ; they would be 

1 Sir Wm. Hamilton, Philosophy of Perception. Compare Aristotle, De 
Anima, 1. 5: " Happiness consists in an active exercise of the faculties/' 



THOUGHT. 



449 



SO, vre think, if they v:ere only conscious. But v/e Iccive them 
in happy ignorance of their want, to find the simplest forms of 
actual hapjjiness in sensation and spontaneous motion. Every 
leaf and every drop of water teems with animalcular life and joy. 
The fossil remains of the earth's strata, thousands of feet in 
thickness, — remains whose fossil character is largely discovered 
by the microscope, — have been truly styled "monuments of 
the felicity of ages." And that felicity is continued in multi- 
pUed and more exquisite forms of animal life, in the maturer 
age of the earth ; a world-wide life in which God takes delight, 
and in which man may rejoice. But man's joy in the well-be- 
ing of the brutes is only his sympathy wdth the benevolence of 
God. Created to be lord over them, with a rational dominion 
that should liken him to God, he must seek for himself a higher 
good. 

§ 3. THOUGHT. 

"We can hardly say of the brutes that they think ; for, in the 
strict sense of the term, " he only thinks who reflects," and re- 
flection implies purpose and free will. Yet the mind of the 
brute is, in its acts of intelligence, carried, as it were, through 
the forms of thought ; and it thus passively enjoys some of the 
pleasures of intellection, though it can not control and augment 
them by the powers of freedom. 

So noble is the life of thouglit in man that it may be his 
greatest danger. It saves him from brutish sensuality — when 
it is not perverted and squandered to adorn his lusts. It invites 
him to the realm of truth ; it compels him more or less into the 
possession of knowledge ; it oflfers him, as an object of science, the 
mastery of the whole world. With one of its created aids of 
vision it discovers kingdoms in leaflets; with another it gives 
hil l conquest of the stars. It determines the unseen laws of all 
things, and the methods of God's own M'ork. It tempts and se- 
duces him away from God when it is made an idol, an end in it- 
self, and not ancillary to a higher life. Thus did man fall. 
And for this sin was the wisest of men reduced to utter the 
38* 



450 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



complaint : " In much wisdom is much grief ; and he that in- 
creaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. " 

§ 4. FREE WILL. 

Self-consciousness and freedom denote a higher life than mere 
intelligence, which they transmute into thought; higher than 
thought, because they carry it on to personality, responsibility, 
and the capacity of virtue ; and far higher than sensation, for it 
is only in abjuring mere pleasure that true freedom is possible. 
Consciousness would be little worth, if it only enabled us to 
pleasure ourselves more knowingly than the brute ; and free 
will would be as worthless, if it could only prefer one form of 
gratification to another. That would not be freedom, but ca- 
pricious spontaneity. The brute acts spontaneously in yielding 
to its impulses of desire ; but it can not change or rise above 
them ; it is therefore unfree. The human will is free just be- 
cause it can rise above the desire of gratification, can oppose the 
moral to the sensational, the spirit to the flesh. The love of 
pleasure is not active, but passive ; whence it is so subject to 
passion. Its law is that of inertia ; its power, nothing but mo- 
mentum, and it must obey the " greater motive." In this lower 
sphere the necessarian may truly say that the lover of gain can 
not prefer a shilling to a pound, and that the epicure can not 
prefer a crust to a feast. And as sin greatly consists in the love 
of pleasure more than of God, it is a state of bondage. " Who- 
soever committeth sin is the servant of sin." Human freedom is 
only a delusive bondage, if it can not hold the love of pleasure 
in abeyance, to seek a nobler end. 

But that end can not be any mere happiness, however refined ; 
for then the refining of our enjoyment would only be the refin- 
ing of our bondage. The law of the " stronger motive " would 
still hold good ; the pursuit of the best pleasure would be a ne- 
cessity ; it could not be a virtue. Happiness, then, can not be 
man's highest good. To say that the truest ivelfare is the high- 
est good, is almost a truism ; but the enjoyment of that welfare 



j FREE WILL. 451 

i 

i is an instinctive desire, not a matter of duty. That the highest 
well being should be happy being is God's concern, not ours. 
Waiving for a moment the question wherein true virtue con- 

i- sists, we remark, man's noblest aim must be a virtue. But vir- 
tue is the free energy of a higher life-power. The exercise of 
virtue brings happiness of course ; for happiness is " the reflex 
of unimpeded energy." But to make this happiness the end, is 

jl to ignore the proper aim of virtue, and to derange the whole 

j scheme of action. It is the highest blessedness to see the divine 

i| glorj. " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 

|! But they who seek after God just to find happiness, will see 
only themselves. They will never discover His glory ; that can 

I only, as a mirror, reflect their own poor image. Happiness is 

I not an essence, subsisting by itself. It is like the rainbow, 
which the child may run after, hoping to grasp it ; but its finished 
image is in the eye of the beholder. It is most enjoyed when 
least thought of ; as when Archimedes, transported with joy at 

I a great discovery, cried " Eureka," not dreaming that he had 

' found happiness.^ 

Here it is apparent in what sense virtue is its own reward. 
Virtue is action; withstanding, by a peculiar vitality, the se- 
ductions to which vice yields. The reward of vice is the de- 
cay of life ; that of virtue, its vigor and growth. And here we 
see why virtue may be encouraged, and yet remain unbought 
and disinterested. It is the active vigor of life ; the right use 
of our being, that makes it worth preserving. Immortality is 
not its reward, but its proper sphere. God asks men to be vir- 
tuous, not simply that they may live for ever ; but that, living 
for ever, they may be ever virtuous. And here the censure of 
Pomponatius on the ancient argument for a future life seems 

1 " You object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions for the pleasure of a 
good conscience ; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist ! Heaven 
bless you and mend your logic ! Don't you see that, if conscience, which is 
in its nature a consequence, yvere thus anticipated, and made an antecedent — 
a party instead of a judge — it would dishonor your draft upon it, — it would 
not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with 
this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon conscience, to give 
you any pleasure at allV " — Coleridge. 



452 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



ill-judged. "If virtue is her own reward," he would say, "she 
is paid already, and may have her discharge." We answer, 
" She has her reAvard, indeed ; but there is none other so fit to 
dwell among men. Let her be retained ; and those also who re- 
tain her, for her sake." 

These views of life as the highest good, of its happiness as 
found in virtue, and of its continuance as being not the rev/ard 
but the proper sphere of holiness, are contained, we think, in the 
last words of Moses to the Israelites : I call heaven and earth 
to record this day against you, that I have set before you life 
and death, blessing and cursing ; therefore choose life, that both 
thou and thy seed may live ; that thou mayest love the Lord 
thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou 
mayest cleave unto Him (for He is thy life and the- length of 
thy days) ; that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord 
sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to 
give them." 

§ 5. THE ELECTION. 

Is man indeed made a party to the question of his own im- 
mortality? We have given various reasons for saying that those 
who live for ever, do so of their own choice; to which others 
may here be added. 1. In this way alone can life become 
strictly and truly, man's own. Without such free acceptance, 
the inheritance would be an entail. With it, the life, freely 
received as God's free gift, becomes as really man's own as if he 
had created it. The disabilities of dependent existence are 
overcome, when the candidate for life is empowered to appro- 
priate the offered boon to himself. Thus it becomes in a special 
sense his property, such as it could not be made by any com- 
pulsion ; it pertains to him by his own act ; and that act the 
highest act of his life, because it is the choice of life. He w^ho 
says " I will live " — does then begin to live as never before. 

2. In this view eternal existence is not man's necessity ; it 
is not imposed upon him, willing or unwilling. He is invited, 
not compelled, to be immortal. Here, then, is found an answer 
to the ancient cavil, that our being is obtruded upon us ; that 



THE ELECTION. 



453 



God, or fate, has brought us into being without consulting our 
wishes, and keeps us in being with the same inexorable rigor. 
The cavil may be prompted, indeed, by wrong feelings, — sinful 
impatience and want of faith under the ills of life ; and it might 
be silenced if with imm.ortalitj eternal freedom were secured to 
each one. But it is vrholly justified, if in the infancy of man's 
being he must choose between eternal weal or woe. Hence we 
need not wonder that Justin Martyr treats it with respect, and 
answers it truly, if we interpret his words strictly. Man is 
brought into being, unasked, indeed, but just in order that he 
may be consulted, and may choose for himself. " For as God 
created us at first, when we were not, so by the same power will 
he restore us to being again, and crown with the immortal 
enjoyment of himself such as have made it their choice to 
please their Maker. For though we had no choice in our crea- 
tion, yet in our regeneration we have ; for God persuades ouly, 
and draws us gently in our regeneration, by cooperating freely 
v.'ith those rational powers he has bestovred upon us." 

3. In this view alone does eternal life appear truly of grace. 
Gratuity ceases, when its acceptance is a necessity. The life 
and happiness which God bestows upon the brute creation are 
bounties ; not strictly gifts, because they answer to no power of 
acceptance. And the glory of the divine gratuity consists much 
in this, that the greatness of the gift precludes the danger of its 
being offered in vain. Wisdom, that " crieth in the streets," 
only asks a hearing, and her heavenly beauty will win her suit. 

Here we meet a very common argument that an offer so great 
as that of eternal life should not depend on the capricious choice 
of man, — a wayward child of earth, an infant of days before 
the unending years. That is the same as to say that the great 
ness of the grace makes it a debt ; or that the folly of those to 
whom it is offered demands that they should be made wise — as 
if this were their right. If the offered gift were a little thing, 
no such claim would be set up. When it swells to infinite value, 
men claim it as their due, lest in their madness they should 
spurn it away. 

1 Apology, c. 10. Compare Lactan., Instt. Dir., 1 7, c. 5. 



454 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



4. The view we have taken enhances the dignity of man. 
An inherent immortality, created into man's very being, might 
ennoble him as making him truly divine. Self-existence would 
then be his dignity. Man approaches as nearly to this as he 
could wish, and yet retains all his blessed dependence, when of 
himself he accepts existence. 

But how, it is asked, can man's free election of life consist 
with God's election from among men ? We answer, if God's 
foreknowledge were limited by the connection of events as 
causes and effects, then either man's freedom or God's omnis- 
cience must be given up. But if God's knowledge is not under 
the conditions of Now and Then, lis He is not omnipresent by 
the law of Here and There, — if He indeed dwells in eternity, 
— then may He know, and choose, and love His own, and no 
finite reason can say whether they are first known, or chosen, or 
loved. They are elect, indeed; but their election was no bar to 
the salvation of those who refused life. They are elect also, 
perhaps more prominently than is commonly supposed, in a 
moral sense; they are the chosen ones — choice, in the sight of 
God. 

And they may be thus choice, because they freely choose God, 
in the infancy of their being ; choice, as those could not be, who 
should accept life in a second or third probation, after repeated 
rejections of it, and when the youthful vigor of their being was 
gone. Is not this intimated in the peculiar regard which God 
shows for the young? " I love them that love me, and they that 
seek me early shall find me." " Suffer little children to come 
unto me, and forbid, them not ; for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven." May not the divine wisdom find a limit, beyond 
which it is better to make anew than to repair the old ? 

But while we assert man's entire freedom in respect to God's 
election, — the Arminian side of the organic truth, — we by no 
means deny God's sovereignty or his foreordination. We have 
already spoken of his appointing some to be vessels of honor and 
others of dishonor, as a mystery. But the myster}^ may reach 
back into the counsels of eternity in the same way that the ques- 
tion whether the solar system should be located here or there 



TnE ELECTION. 



455 



was to be determined by an original and eternal arbitrament of 
! God. In the place which God appoints to various creatures 
; there may be ample range for his forcordinatlons, while their 
freedom is unharmed. 

5. The view we offer furnishes occasion of happiness for the 
saved. Those who insist upon God's election as precluding 
man's, have asserted the contrary. To be saved by God's special 
■! goodness, w^ithout any act of one's own, it is said, will give the 
highest feeling of happiness. " Not unto us, O Lord, but unto 
thy name, give glory for thy mercy." This argument against 
|i free will has been most fully developed by Bayle. "To be 
' firmly persuaded," he says, " that we move only in obedience to 
impulses and divine directions in the practice of virtue, so far 
from diminishing the satisfaction of conscience, makes it the more 
delightful. A Pharisee [unhappy illustration, since the Phari- 
sees were fatalists] who is persuaded that he obeys the law of 
God by the powers of his own free will, feels great pleasure ; 
but far less than the true devotees of the Reformed Communion, 
i who deem themselves incapable of any good thing, except as 
they are impelled by an irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit 
He who in giving alms is persuaded that it is God who has 
inspired the thought and given him power to execute it, is hap- 
pier than he who attributes to himself all the glory of an act of 
charity. Indeed, the persuasion of a man who does not believe 
that he can even cooperate with grace, is well fitted to strengthen 
his union and intercourse with God, and consequently the joy of 
his soul." After a fmv other illustrations the argument pro- 
|| ceeds : " To believe firmly and on good grounds that one has 
received of God a special privilege, that one is His chosen ves- 
sel. His favorite, may extinguish pride, but can not diminish 
, one's pleasure. It may prevent flattery and self-conceit, but not 
' that one should feel himself very happy." 

1 Reponse aux Questions d'un Provincial, Part. II. c. 80. He cites among 
othei examples that of jEneas : 

" Non haec humanis opiMs, non arte magistra 
Proveniunt: neque te, ^nea, mea dextra servat; 
Major agit Deus, atque opera ad majora remittet." 
I JEneid. xii. 427-429. 



456 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



We willingly concede the happiness of a good fortune, a high 
destiny, a brilliant success. But — not to say that examples of 
a splendid career are foreign to the question at issue — there 
have been unsuccessful great men, who will be admired through 
all time. And there is a proverb which says that fortune favors 
fools. The truth in Bayle's argument becomes a one-sided half- 
*ruth, and a falsehood, when the divine favor is supposed to pre- 
clude all action of the human soul, and thus to nullify the very 
idea of virtue and of character. We congratulate the brave 
man, if he is successful ; but success never made a hero. To 
deserve success is better than to enjoy it. The heirs of eternal 
life may give God the glory of their salvation ; but their humility 
should give place to shame, if they have not themselves proved 
worthy to be the "sons of God," — if they have not given dili- 
gence to make their calling and election sure. They are most 
to be congratulated, who are " strong in the Lord," and who 
" quit them like men." 

§ 6. VIRTUE. 

An examination of the popular theory of the " good in all " 
brings us at once to the question : What is true virtue ? And 
here, freely conceding, for argument's sake, that there is in most 
men, even the most abandoned, a remaining susceptibility of 
good, we doubt whether that is a moral good, or a virtue ; and, 
taking the terms "justice" and "goodness" in a sense to be 
defined presently, we propose to show that real virtue is found 
only in their union ; though each without/ the other may furnish 
various forms of apparent virtue. 

Plato has remarked that " God is not only good, but also just ; 
and he has an esteem for justice beyond any thing that is felt 
among men." The distinction must be at once admitted, unless 
we say that virtue or morality has nothing to do with conscience, 
and that the distinctions of right and wrong are a delusion. 

We may define "justice" as conformity to the rule of right. 
It may be mere innocence, or absence of guilt. It may be more 
than this, as enforcing a rule of right in respect to others. Inno- 
cence is justice in repose ; justice is innocence in energy. 



VIRTUE. 



457 



The term " goodness " we sliall use in the utilitarian sense. 
He is a good man who confers benefits, or who meets the wants 
or wishes of another. 
With this distinction seems to accord the language of Paul : 
j "Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure 
for a good man some would even dare to die." The reason is, 
we naturally love the good man, while we simply admire the just 
^ man. The one is our friend, whose good nature and agreeable 

■ qualities or kind acts have bound us to him ; the other is the 
! man of unbending integrity, whom we must respect. The one 
I wins our affection ; the other compels our admiration. The one 
, gives us pleasure and delight ; the other inspires awe and rever- 
f ence. The one engages us by the ties of gratitude ; the other 

binds us to a sense of duty. The one is nearer to us, and be- 
Ij comes a part of our being, so that we can hardly live without 
j him ; the other is strong and robust, and can endure much ; the 
j principle of his integrity will sustain him ; no essential evil can 
'[ befall him. If his justness take the form of godliness, he has 

■ " dwelt in the secret place of the Most High, and he shall abide 
under the shadow of the Almighty." Hence we are ready to 
die, if need be, for the good man, while the just man may be per- 
mitted, as he can endure, to die for himself. 

Now it is true that there can be no sincere love of the good 
man without a hearty admiration of the just man, and a desire 
to copy his virtues. Yet fallen human nature may seek to sun- 
der the qualities of goodness and justice and to regard one 
without the other ; hence two forms of spurious devotion. 

1. The Idolatry of Goodness. — This is easily explained, and 
|, the examples of it are numerous. Self-love delights in those 
who befriend or flatter us, and may even hate those who seek to 
I do better for us. Thus a certain citizen of Athens ostracised 
I Aristides, though he was doubtless as good a man as any other, 
I because he could not bear to hear him perpetually called " Aris- 
tides the Just." Thus Alcibiades could dread the presence of 
Socrates, who sought to direct his mind to a nobler ambition 
tlian the poor adulation of sycophants. " I stop my ears," says 
he, " and flee away as fast as possible, that I may not sit down 

39 



458 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



beside him and grow old in listening to his talk. . . . And 
often have I wislied that he were no longer to be seen among 
men." The Israelites under Joshua appear to have regarded 
Jehovah as a patron deity, a powerful and friendly God, and to 
have preferred his service to that of Baal mainly for this reason. 
He was beneficent and good. " Therefore," say they, " will we 
serve the Lord, for he is our God." And Joshua might well 
be concerned for the genuineness of their devotion. " Ye can 
not serve the Lord," he tells them, "for he is a holy God; he is 
a jealous God ; he will not forgive your trespasses nor your 
sins ; " intimating that God required integrity in their allegiance 
to him; without Avhich, he might "turn and do them hurt and 
consume them," i. e. his holiness would appear against them, 
as Ihey had not received it. Their subsequent history showed 
that the admonition was not uncalled for. 

And in the character of Christ and the reception he met on 
earth, we have a still more marked illustration of the idolatry 
w^e have named. The Jews were wedded to the idea of a tem- 
poral deliverer, a good king, who should rescue them from the 
tryanny of the Romans, reestablish the throne of David, and 
bring the peoples of the earth as proselytes to their customs and 
religion. The Messiah appeared among them ; was born their 
king, and by liis miracles of beneficence proved himself a prince 
of such goodness that none other could for a moment compare 
with him, and Heaven itself could offer them no more. But he 
was not only good ; he was also just ; and the beatitudes uttered 
in his Sermon on the Mount, — the inaugural in which he set 
forth the principles by which he should reign, — ran wholly 
counter to the expectations of the chosen people, because he 
told them the kingdom of heaven is " not meat and drink, but 
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Such 
was his goodness that the earthly benefits he conferred were but 
mere types of far richer gifts — the healing of worse than phys- 
ical maladies, and the grant of eternal life ; but these gifts were 
to be enjoyed only by the poor in spirit ; the kingdom of heaven 
belonged to the meek ; the pure in heart alone should see God. 
The evangelical prophet had described his goodness and his 



VIRTUE. 



justice in ii single picture : " He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor 
cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall 
he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. lie 
shall bring forth judgment unto truth ; he shall not fail, nor be 
discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth." And he wan 
rejected not through misapprehension of his real character, for 
he could say to those who knew him well: "Ye have both seen 
and hated both me and my Father." The people preferred 
Caesar for a king, and Barabbas for a prisoner to be released, 
for reasons boldly charged upon them by Peter : " Him ye de- 
livered up, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when lie 
was determined to let Him go. But ye denied the Holy One, 
and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you ;" 
and by Stephen : "This was that Just One, of whom the people 
were the betrayers and murderers." 

2. The Idolatry of Justice. — "We have already seen how a 
morbid conscience or a lofty and defiant temper may delight in 
the notion of justice, even though one is condemned by it. But 
the worship of justice without goodness commonly appears in 
other forms, either as selfishness or as fanaticism. How often 
do men rejoice in the law, though it make their neighbor's case 
a hard one. The prosecutor insists that a principle must be 
maintained, he wants nothing but justice. Thus men wax right- 
eous overmuch, and are glad in their hearts that the law knows 
no mercy. What the prosecutor does in the name of the state, 
the persecutor does in the name of religion. Thus Saul, in his 
zeal for a law given from Sinai, could breathe out threaten higs 
and slaughter, and flatter himself that he was doing God ser- 
vice. The inquisitor is made the incarnation of cruelty which 
he is, by his fond notion that men can be saved only in some 
churchly or doctrinal way; knowing that God is just, he has too 
willingly forgotten that he is also good, and has himself ceased 
to be good. By a similar process the ascetic arrives at the con- 
clusion that he has no right to be useful to his fellow men or to 
receive good from them. In the same way he who had made a 
religious vow, so that he could call his future plans a Corban, 
— a consecrated thing, — used to think himself released even 



460 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



from filial duty. And the taboo, the fetish, and all the impure 
consecrations of idolatrous Avorship, are the ripe fruit of the 
same perversion. It is the essence of superstition to conceive 
of man's relations to God as purely those of justice, and thus to 
regard the divine favor as a thing to be propitiated only by 
some just claim upon it. Hence all empty ceremonies, penan- 
ces, austerities, in which it is forgotten that God will have mercy 
and not sacrifice. But the falsified justice ever appears as a 
frightful caricature. The Scribes and Pharisees who had so 
much of it, even to the tithing of mint, were those who hated 
most the truly Just One, and who imposed intolerable burdens 
upon the people. 

The Jews have a tradition that when the tables of the Law 
were broken by Moses, in his displeasure with the sinning 
Israelites, they pressed eagerly to snatch for the fragments ; and 
he deemed himself quite happy who secured a piece of the Law, 
to keep. The story is a lively picture of human nature, so prone 
to sunder the elements of true virtue from each other, and to be 
a part only of what God requires. It is as if man were shat- 
tered in the Fall, and he had not yet recovered the integrity of 
his moral sense. 

If now the qualities of goodness and justice tended each to 
produce the other, then might the doctrine of the " good in all " 
as a saving germ of virtue, be maintained. But the fact is just 
the reverse. When goodness and justice are sundered, so far 
from each producing the other, each tends to corrupt and destroy 
itself.- The partial and one-sided character naturally degene- 
rates. Instead of the complementary virtue, it produces the 
opposite vice. And the methods and progress of this corruption 
may be easily traced. 

Thus, he vv^ho tries to be good without being just, will become, 
first, simply good-natured ; then kind and clever ; then complai- 
sant and yielding ; he then falls an easy prey to temptation, and 
becomes at last weak, worthless, bad. 

On the other hand, he who would be just without being good, 
will naturally grow strict ; then exact and rigid ; then harsh and 
severe ; then heartless ; and soon haughty, overbearing, cruel, 
unjust. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



461 



The practical illustrations of this perverse tendency are nu- 
merous. We will add but a single example to show how the 
principles of justice and goodness may struggle together in the 
same mind, and each come to naught. The slaveholder at one 
time would fain renounce his claim of property in those whom 
he has inherited, making them to be indeed men, but leaving 
them to fortune ; as if he could be just to them without goodness. 
More commonly he resolves to treat his slaves kindly, without 
securing for them the rights of manhood and freedom ; as if he 
could be good to them without doing them justice. And most 
of the wrongs under which humanity groans are prolonged or 
aggravated by the effort to be virtuous at halves, — to be either 
just or good, but not both. 

§ 7. THE ATONEMENT. 

In the Sermon on the Mount, having censured the Pharisaic 
righteousness on the one hand, and the publican goodness on the 
other hand, Christ requires his followers to be " perfect, as the 
Father in heaven is perfect." That is, they must be complete. 
Those who would be the children of the Heavenly Father, are 
not to be half-virtuous. They must possess all the essential ele- 
ments of true virtue, if they v/ould be " partakers of the divine 
nature." And if justice and goodness are such elements, they 
must be had in living union, by all who would enter the heavenly 
kingdom.' The failure of either is the forfeiture of eternal life. 

The inner relation of these each to the other may be a mys- 
tery, while their mutual necessity is an obvious fact. They may 
be the polar forces of the same vital principle. They may be 
compared as centrifugal and centripetal forces; or as power, and 
law regulating the power and making it efficient ; or as the oak 
and the ivy, giving mutual support and adornment — strength 
and beauty. We may consider the one as more manly, the other 
as more womanly. Each, for a special life-work, may have an 
apparent prominence ; the other being more hidden yet no less 
effective. Will not their equipoise be discovered in the perfected 

39* 



462 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



man, when marriage and all the kindred relations of life are 
done away in a divine espousal ? ^ 

But how can the fallen man, the integrity of whose virtue is 
lost, and who is so prone to sunder the elements of it, recover 
them in their harmony? As the recovery of a natural life, so 
likewise that of the moral life might have been impossible with- 
out a redemption, — a spiritual, vital power, more potent than 
instruction or example, and to be found only in Christ. It is the 
great work of our salvation that He who was at once so just and 
so good, who was "full of grace and truth," in whom mercy and 
truth met together, rigliteousness and peace kissed each other, — 
shoukl be formed in us, the hope of glory. And while we dis- 
card the notion that Christ's righteousness in our behalf consisted 
in the payment of a penal debt, may not the doctrine of Atone- 
ment find some illustration in the want of man's nature which we 
speak of? The nature of the redemptive work must be judged 
by its effects ; and these are remarkable, in that the child of 
God acquires not only a new love of goodness, but a more lively 
moral sense. The law which before was a sentence of death 
becomes a living, active principle. " What the law could not do, 
in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son 
in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the 
flesh ; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us 
who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." Here is a 
" law-work" different indeed from that commonly intended by 
the phrase, — a work not of death, but of life; but does not this 
efRcacy of Christ's work groAV out of Plis companionship with 
man in suffering and death, whereby He might reach and rescue 
us? And whatever be the theology of the Atonement, are there 
not here two phases of truth the denial of which betrays itself in 
a defective practical view ? When men insist on the efficacy of 
repentance alone for salvation, as if Christ were not indeed our 
Righteousness, do they not think of God too exclusively as good, 
and does not their faith become sentimental and pov/erless ? 

1 May not the arguments of Emaniael S^Tedenborg in support of the notion of 
Srogelic marriage be answered in this vlev,^? 



FAITH. 



463 



When, on the other hand, men insist on the efficacy of Christ's 
sufferings, as if salvation were by the imputation of their merit, 
do they not think of God too exclusively as just, and does not 
their faith become rigid and formal ? Tlie two extremes are 
likely to meet in a lukewarm piety and a degenerate morality, 
because the whole of Christ is not received, " who is of God 
made unto us wisdom, and justification, and sanctification, and 
redemption." ^ 

§ 8. FAITH. 

Coleridge has made a just distinction between prudence, mor- 
ality, and religion ; which he illustrates with reference to the 
faculties of the soul. " The prudential," he says, " corresponds 
to the sense and the understanding ; the moral to the heart and 
conscience ; the spiritual to the will and reason ; that is, to the 
finite will reduced to harmony with, and in subordination to the 
reason, as a ray from that true light which is both reason and 
will — universal reason, and will absolute." 

We have already observed that free will, as the power of pre- 
ferring the moral to the pleasurable, or duty to mere self-inter- 
est, is essentially a higher life. Yet this free v/ill can not be in 
itself the highest life. For on iLe one hand, it contains the 
power of wrong action, — lust conceiving sin, and sin producing 
death. And though the sceptical argument against free will, — 
that it contains a power which ought not to be used, and which 
therefore ought not to exist, — is fallacious, still we must regard 
the contingency of wrong action as a thing to be superseded, by 
the alliance of the will with some higher law of life. 

But, on the other hand, this higher life is not found in the 
conscience. For though it be supreme as Law, yet it is not 
Life. The subjection of the will to the conscience alone may be 
even a bondage — infinitely preferable, indeed, to the bondage 
of sin, unless it arise from the tormenting conflict of conscience 

iWhen Christ is called the "power of God" {dvvafitg), may not the phrase 
denote a truth in the Jewish expectation of an outward work for tlielr salvation ? 
as may the phrase "wisdom of God" (cro^ia) denote a truth in the thought of 
the Greeks, who looked for salvation (and they used this choice word) from 
within the mind, after the manner of the ethical theology. 



464 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



and lust, yet a bondage far removed from the peace and joy 
which is man's true life. 

Faith, if we mistake not, is the means of deliverance from this 
bondage. Conscience is imperative : " Do what is right, be the 
consequence wdiat it may." Faith encourages : " The conse- 
quence can not be evil." Let justice be done, though the 
heavens fall — says the one. The heavens can not fall — says 
the other.^ Thus faith assures the heart, by laying hold upon 
the infinite, and climbing towards heaven. It is the tendril 
power of the soul. By it the soul turns away from creeping 
upon the earth, and, grasping the support that is offered in 
Christ, rises toward God. Conscience points upward, directing 
the will to a law above. Faith looks thither, and sees farther ; 
it mounts above the law to " dwell in the secret place of the 
Most High, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty." The 
law is still " a lamp to the feet, and a light to the path ; but no 
longer a yoke or a burden. Faith embraces the Christ to whom 
the conscience was a schoolmaster; and in this "act of the 
moral reason" (as Baxter defines faith), the will accepts the 
law, and makes it a perfect law of liberty. By placing itself on 
the divine side of law, the will at once secures its steadfastness 
and its freedom. 

Fnith is, of course, so far from being opposed to reason that 
it is its main support. Reason demonstrates that certain things 
must he, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Con- 
science tells us of what ought to he. Faith confirms the voice of 
each, by affirming that there can be no disruption of the world's 
harmony, — no conflict of truth with truth, or of duty with wel- 
fare. It is only opposed to the senses that deceive, and to the 
passions that seduce. It may be defined as the synthesis of 

1 Lutlier has finely described the office of faith. " As I looked out at the 
Vv^indovr, I saw the stars in the heavens, and the whole fair dome of God; yet 
did 1 see no pillars on v/hich the Master has placed this dome. Nevertheless, 
the heavens fell not, and the dome stands yet fast. Now, there are some that 
seek for such pillars. They would fain lay hold of and feel them. And be- 
cause they can not do this, they struggle and tremble as if the heaven must 
certainly fall, for no other reason than because they can not see the pillars 
Could they but lay hold of these, the heaven would stand firm." 



FAITH. 



4G5 



i tliouglit, feeling, and act ; ^ the will embracing the rational and 
' moral convictions, and resolving them into a life of harmony 
j with the will of Him who is Lord of the conscience, and the 
' Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 

But this far-reaching and all-embracing power of faith indi- 
cates its nature as a higher life. We may affirm that it alone 
unites justice and goodness in true virtue, and that it transmutes 
|i moral law into religious principle. Is not this faith the true 

I beginning of a divine life, and the " partaking of the divine na- 
1! . ture ? " If w^e look to the scriptural account of its fruits (2 Pet. 

II i. 5-8; James iii. 17, 18) it would seem also the productive 
I power of the soul. Is it not a power received and accepted 
I from on high, that makes the man a new creature ? " In the 

redeemed, there is," says Coleridge, "a regeneration, a birth, 
a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal principle 
of a higher and enduring life, of a spiritual life ; that is, a life 
the actuality of which is not dependent on the material body, or 
limited by the circumstances and processes indispensable to its 
organization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the differential of 
immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith and love 
[ is the integrant, and the life in Christ the integration." 

Respecting saving faith two questions here arise. 1st, Is it 
possible to those who have not heard the name of Christ ? i. e. 
Are the heathen salvable ? 2d, May those be saved, who, hav- 
ing heard the name of Christ, deny his special character as a 
Savior ? 

To either of these questions we may reply, faith is more 
moral than intellectual. " With the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness." Faith is trust, or confidence in God. Over 
against the conviction of sin and need, it is the hope that by 
some goodness and grace of God one may be pardoned. Hence 
it may be the less one knows of God's methods of grace, the 
more implicit may be his faith, and the wider its range. As 
they who believe without having seen are more blessed than the 
doubting Thomas, so, among those who lived before Christ's day, 



1 See Discourses on the Nature of Faith; by W. H. Starr. 



466 



THE HIGHEST GOOD. 



or whose lot has fallen without the bounds of Christendom, there 
may be a faith, that " does justly, and loves mercy, and walks 
humbly before God," that is more blessed because less instruct- 
ed in the details of the divine plan. Its nature is illustrated by 
the case of the young man of whom account is given in the ninth 
chapter of John's Gospel. In the fervor of his gratitude to the 
unknown benefactor who had opened his eyes, he suffers himself 
to be cast out of the synagogue for his confidence in him. The 
Christ whose name he knew not then meets him with tlie ques- 
tion ; "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" He asks: 
"Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" and when 
told that he stands before him, confesses and worships. Now 
here Avas no change of heart, produced by this conversation. It 
gave him nothing but information ; his feelings w^ere the same 
w4ien it ended as when it began. It only gave a new direction 
and a freer course to a faith already existing. In the strict 
sense of the word, it informed a faith which it did not create. 

So the heathen may have an unformed faith, which saves the 
soul, because it is in substance what God requires, and which 
will joyfully accept Christ wdien revealed, as the object after 
which it has yearned. It still remains true that the lieathen 
stand in deplorable need of the Gospel, to encourage the heart Avith 
its glad tidings and to interpret for them the common goodness 
of God, which in their twilight, they now misconstrue and abuse. 

In principle, the case of those who have heard the name of 
Ciirist, but who reject him in ignorance of his character, does 
not ditfer from that of the heathen. Under the names of " Gos- 
pel," and " Savior," they may have heard such representations 
of the divine government and of the redemptive work that their 
apparent unbelief is the most generous and noble faith. Their 
rejection of Christ may be but nominal. They may be waiting 
for the true Christ because the Nazarene has been known to 
them only as a false Christ. It still remains true that the per- 
version of the Gospel is as dangerous for those who reject it, as 
it is criminal in those who heedlessly pervert it. Fancying that 
we are " evangelical," we may so take away the Lord from the 
minds of men that they shall utterly fail to find him, and shall 



LOVE. 



467 



despair and perish. Wlien we profess to hold the true Gospel, 
we should be not high-minded, but fear; for we then in fact 
signally claim to be — what we ever must be — our brothers' 
keepers ; and we have no right to judge or condemn those who 
i reject our gospel, until it has been preached not as a formal doc- 
trine, but as a true and beneficent Christian life. 

§ 9. LOVE. 

Faith can not subsist without Love, which is the " fulfilling of 
the law," and the " bond of perfectness." Their inner relation 
j to each other may be obscure. Perhaps they may be compared 
as the act, and the habit, of the redeemed soul ; or as volition 
and emotion. Act is ever passing into habit, — as the musician 
learns to play without conscious attention or effort, with delight- 
ful facility, and as a second nature. This gives new conscious- 
ness of power ; new courage and effort; new victory and joy. 
That which began with self-denial, ends in a higher life of self- 
indulgence. The bondage of sin has yielded to the power of 
self-command, and this to a higher subjection, ■ — the self-will 
vanishing in its free allegiance to the divine will. The individ- 
ual redemption is then complete ; that which began with the 
want of power to do right, has ended in the lack of power to do 
wrong, and the contingency of sin, which pertains to our proba- 
tion, is passed. ^ This is the perfect law of liberty, in wliich we 
may continue, and be blessed in our doing. Inward delight in 
the law of God pervades all the powers of the soul. The fear 
and torment that pertained to a lingering power of sin, have 
been cast out by perfect love. 

Virtue, we have granted, brings a reward of its own. And so 
does faith ; but this is specially true of love. Love, for what- 
ever object, imparts happiness though it be a mere fondness or 
pity for an unworthy thing. The poet has truly said — 

" Love is the life of hving things." 

1 Augustine defines the various stages of the will in respect to freedom, as a 
non posstnon ptccare^Q. posse non peccare, and a non posse peccare. 



463 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 

For it is their joy. But it is the highest joy when it is elevated 
and conformed to the supreme law of the world, as " holy, just, 
and good ; " Avhen it begins to embrace the world itself as 
redeemed for subjection to this law ; when it apprehends the 
universe and eternity as the sphere of its infinitely varied appli- 
cation ; and when it learns to rejoice in Him who is infinitely 
greater than the universe, to receive His smile, and to share His 
love and joy. As divine Love created the world, and rejoices 
in it all, even in a divine sorrow for that which turns av^'ay from 
God and dies, — so Christian love, in sympathy with the divine, 
encircles and appropriates all things. It transmutes all things, 
even those which seem adverse, into spiritual wealth ; like the 
philosopher's stone changing all it touches into gold. Love not 
only quickens the intellect, but sanctifies it as a spiritual sense, 
that " discernetli all things." The stores of learning, or the 
intellectual mastery of things, thus become an emblem of the 
Christian's wealth, in a nearer and dearer possession. He is 
heir of all things, because he has the mind of Christ. Because 
he loves, the entire world, life and death, things present and 
things to come — all are his ; as he is Christ's, and Christ is 
God's. 

This, whichis the divine blessedness, must be indeed the Highest 
Good of man. Whence Paul, alluding, perhaps, to inquiries 
with which the Ephesian Christians had been familiar, prays 
for them, " that Pie would grant you, according to the riches of 
His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the 
inner man ; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that 
ye, being rooted and grounded in Love, may be able to compre- 
hend with all saints, what is Breadth, and Length, and Depth, 
and Height ; even to know the Love of Christ, — which passeth 
knowledge, — that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." 



THE END. 



INDEX. 



Abarbanel, I., emplo3^s the figure of 
prolepsis, page 177; ou future 
punishment, 196 ; immortality of 
a class, 288 ; his opinions, 339. 

Abelard, Peter, his absolutism, 58, 
59. 

Ability, natural and moral, 114-118. 
Absolutism, defined, 25 ; considered, 

57-61, 381 ; as a theodicy, 67-70 ; 

in Knnt and Schleiermacher, 149. 
Abulfeda, a Mohammedan dualist, 

39. 

Adam died that he might not sin 

for ever, 171. 
JEschvlus, his Prometheus illustrat- 

inc: the dignity of eternal sufter- 

ing, 17. 

^ternitate, in sua, a form of theod- 
icy, 99, 423. 

Africanus, Julius, employs the 
phrase "second death," 178, n. ; 
on the love of offspring, 431. 

Agassiz, L., holds the immortality 
of brutes, 230, n. 

Albo, Joseph, an extinctionist, 341. 

Alcibiades, why he feared Socrates, 
457, 458. 

Alexander, A., on Isa. Ixvi. 24, 199 ; 

on Isa. xxxiii. 14, 205, 206. 
Alford, H., on Luke xv. 7, 133 ; on 

John iii. 36, 207 ; on Kom. vi. 23, 

386, n. 

Alstedius, J. H., a distinction re- 
specting necessity, 348, n. 

Ambi'ose, of Milan, his opinions, 
330 ; his influence, 332. 

Analogy, for the immortality of a 
class, 237-242, 263. 

Anathema, import of, 180, 181. 

Andronicus, interprets Aristotle, 275. 

Angels, the fallen never perfected, 
84. 

40 



Annihilation, a word at Avhich so 
many stumble that we prefer an- 
other. See Extinction. 

Anselm, his theodicies, 72, n., 89, 
n. ; on Gen. ii. 17, 169, n. ; his 
view of atonement, 398. 

Anticipation of the future as pres- 
ent, see Prolepsis. 

Antoninus, denies an after life, 282. 

Aquinas, T., his remark on Man- 
ichieism, 40 ; his theodicies, 72, 
n., 99, n. ; denies the freedom of 
the lost, 124, n. ; alleges that the 
saved rejoice over the lost, 135 ; 
argument for immortality, 235, n.; 
the saved meet the design of cre- 
ation, 239 ; combats Averroism, 
343. 

Arabian contributions to Christian 

theology, 344. 
Archelaus, his dispute with Manes, 

37, 38. 

Aristides the Just, why ostracised, 
457. 

Aristotle, on KokaaiQ and nficoplay 
189; censured by Tatian, 269; 
denied individual immortality, 
274-276, 343, 344; his doctrine 
of rewards exoteric, 278 ; defines 
happiness, 448, n. 

Arminian draft on grace, 381. 

Arminius, J., regards guilt as worse 
than the punishments of hell, 96, 
n. ; cited, 128, n. 

Arnobius, regards the notion of ab- 
solute immortality as corrupting, 
9 ; the immortal as impassible, 16, 
n. ; in eternity nothing early or 
late, 153, n. ; censures the Gnos- 
tics, 286 ; argues extinction, 302- 
305 ; the soul's intermediate na- 



4:70 



INDEX. 



ture, 308, 309 ; on the Eedemp- 
tion, 404, n. 
Arnold, T., on the nature of faitli, 
61. 

Arrian, cited on Rev. xxii. 11, 208 ; 
on Epictetus, 282. 

Asceticism, promoted by the tenet 
of eternal sufFerino-, 14, 1.5, 50, 51, 
332 ; in the doctrine of heavenly 
bfiss, 51, 373, 374. 

Athanasins, censures dualism, 37 ; 
asserts the frailty of evil, 143, 144; 
his expressions respecting immor- 
tality, 305-308. 

Atheism, defined, 25. 

Athenajroras, on human dignity. 11, 
n., 13, n., 104, n. ; his opinions, 
320, 321 ; on the love of offspring, 
11, n., 431, 432. 

Atonement, regarded as meeting a 
divine exigency, 363-365, 397- 
399 ; not a legal, but a moral ne- 
cessity, 400-403 ; according to 
Calvin, does not require an infi- 
nite being, 404 ; as the harmony 
of justice and goodness, 461, 462 ; 
effected only through Christ, 462, 
463. 

Augusti, J. C. W., on the mediasval 
notion of Satan, 347. 

Augustine, assigns a kingdom to 
Satan, 29 ; his theodicies, 100, n., 
101, 126 ; regards extinction as 
the greatest evil, 104, n. ; perhaps 
allows preexistence, lll,n.; de- 
nies freedom in the lost, 117, 124, 
n. ; supposes temporary mitiga- 
tions of eternal punishments, 127 ; 
describes evil as opposed to being, 
144; on Rom. viii. 10, 175, n. ; 
on John iii. 36, 207 ; his Platonic 
arguments for immortality, 227 ; 
on the intermediate state, 255, 
n. ; mistakes a doctrine of Py- 
thagoras, 269 ; censures the pious 
fraud, 278, n. ; on man's interme- 
diate nature, 310; his opinions, 
330-332 ; sanctions compulsion in 
doctrine, 331, 332 ; admits the ex- 
tensive prevalence of restoration- 
ism, 334 ; distinguishes various 
grades of freedom, 467, n. 

Averroes, his character and opinions, 
342-344. 



Bacon, Fr. (Lord), on the severity 

of laws, 413. 
Bailev, J. P., his " Festus " dualis- 

tic,'49. 

Balsamon, Theodore, asserts man's 
intermediate nature, 311. 

Bancroft, A., an extinetionist, 354. 

Barnabas, doctrine of the epistle as- 
cribed to, 255, n., 289. 

Barnes, A., confesses a burdened 
faith, 54, 55 ; on Isa. Ixvi. 24, 
199 ; on Paul's account in Rom. 
ch. i., 415, n. 

Basil, held preexistence, lll,n. ; on 
the frailty of evil, 144 ; why Adam 
died, 171, n. ; probably a restora- 
tionist, 325. 

Basnage, J. de F., on the Pharisees, 
223, n., 224, n. 

Bates, W., his theodicies, 72, n., 94, 
n., 102, n., 105, n. 

Baxter, R., on human dignity, 13, 
n. ; his theodicies, 102, n., 103, 
104 ; thinks that extinction is 
■worse than existence in pain, 103, 
104 ; that the saved rejoice over 
the lost, 136, n. ; defines faith, 
464. 

Bayle, P., his scepticism, 41, 42 ; 
his Manichsean argument, and re- 
plies thereto, 42-47 ; regards mor- 
al evil as worse than physical, 96, 
n. ; cited, 109, n.; sin not required, 
130, n. ; on the opinions of Luther, 
258, n. ; of Averroes, 344, n. ; on 
Augustine's views of compulsion, 
332, n. ; on the virtues of the 
Socinians, 350, 351 ; his fatalist 
argument examined, 455, 456. 

Bayne, P., the doctrine of eternal 
suffering not to be insisted on, 56, 
57. 

Beard, J. R., on the character of the 
Pharisees, 221, 223-225. [412. 

Beccaria, C, on the severity of laws, 

Bechai, resurrection a Jewish pre- 
rogative, 288 ; on excision, 341. 

Bede, the Venerable, on Rev. xxii. 
11, 207. 

Beecher, E., his mental conflict, 53, 
54 ; the divine sufferings as a the- 
odicy, 77, 78 ; a reviewer of, cited, 
108, 109 ; preexistence as a the- 
odicy, 111, 112 ; his illustration of 



INDEX. 



471 



tlie practical effect of doctrines, 

40G ; his view of the Church, 432. 
Belhimy, J., his tlieodicj, 72, n. 
BeUarinin, li., on tlie state of the 

lost, 116, 117. 
Benekc, asserts preexistence, 111, n. 
Beiiucl, J. A., on Matt. viii. 22, and 

llora. viii. 10, 175, n. ; on 2 Tliess. 

i. 9, 187. 

Benson, G., on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187 ; 

on the phrase "eternal fire," 202, 
Bentham, J,, on the severity of laws, 

41.3. 

Bentley, E.., alludes to learned Jew- 
ish doctors holding annihilation, 
342. 

Beza, T., his doctrine of sin cen- 
sured by Miiller, 130 ; by Mohler, 
131 ; on Rom. viii. 10, 175, n. 

Bhno-avad Gita, on future life, 2G6, 
267. 

Blackburne, F., on the opinions of 
Luther, 258 ; revelation alone as- 
sures immortality, 351. 

Blackstone, Sir W., on the severity 
of laws, 411, 412. 

Blasclse, ij. H,, his absolutism cen- 
sured by Miiller, 61, n, 

Bledsoe, A. T., confesses a gloomy 
doctrine, 51, 52^ his theodicies, 
80, 101, n., 102, 107, 108; denies 
that God permits sin, 148, 149. 

Bloonifield, S. T., on 1 Cor. v. 5, 
183; on Matt. iii. 12, 197; on 
the phrase " eternal fire," 202 : on 
Rev. xxii. 11, 208; on the opin- 
ion of Justin, 315, n. ; on Rom. 
vi. 23, 386, n. ; on 2 Cor. v. 11, 
405, n. 

Bockshammer, G. F., God's omnipo- 
tence favorable to man's freedom, 
151. 

Body, in the resurrection, 247-250 ; 
not the prison of the soul, 253, 
254. 

Boehme, J., perhaps a dualist, 40. 
Boerhius, on the frailty of evil, 
143, n. 

Bonfrerius, J., on Gen. ii. 17, 169, n. 

Bourne, S., an extinctionist, 322. 

Bowring, Sir J., the Buddhists' es- 
timate of Eternity, 426, n. 

Bradwardine, Thos, do, piety in des- 
pair, 126. 



Brctsclineider, C. I., on Rom. viii. 
10; Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col. ii. 13, 175, 
n. ; on Luke xx. 36, 176, n. ; on 
John V. 24, 17*^, n. ; on Hcb. xii. 
23, 253 ; on the intermediate state, 
255, n. ; ccnsiu'cs Joscphus, 336. 

Brooks, J, W., on a passage of 
Irenaius, 258, n. 

Brutes, alleged to be imperishable 
but not immortal, 9, 10 ; their im- 
mortalit}^ involved in certain argu- 
ments, 230 ; asserted by various 
writers, 230, and note, 

Buchanan, J., his theodic}^ 120, n. 

Buddeus, S. F,, a difference between 
evil temporary and evil eternal, 
47, [nity, 426, n. 

Buddhists, their estimate of Etcr- 

Bunsen, C. C. J. (Chev.), on the 
Gnostic dualism, 35 ; the Gnostic 
doctrine of immortality, 286 ; the 
epistle ascribed to Barnabas, 289 ; 
the epistle of Clement, 290 ■ those 
of Ignatius, 290, 291 ; the Shep- 
herd of Hermas, 293 ; the early 
liturgies, 295, 296 ; cited, 298 ; on 
the scholarship of the early Fath- 
ers, 317, 318; on a passage of 
Hippolytus, 324 ; cited, 333, n. 

Bunyan, J., piety in despair, 126 ; 
rarely names eternal misery, 347. 

Burgess, T., on man's intermediate 
nature, 310, 

Burnet, G., utilitarian doctrine of 
punishment, 105, n. ; his theodicy, 
120 ; Queen Mary's argument for 
persecution, 333. 

Burnet, T., the intermediate state, 
255, n. ; cited, 325 ; his pious 
fraud, 352. 

Bushnell, H., this world not the 
moral centre of the universe, 154, 
n. ; on a supposed necessity of 
punishment, 396, 397. 

Bush, Geo., on the meaning of cer- 
tain terms, 253, n. 

Butler, J., on the immortality of 
brutes, 230. 

Buxtorf, J., on the opinion of 
Bechai, 288, 341. 

Byron, G. G. B., cited, 17, n., 122. 

Cahen, S., on Gen. ii. 17, 169, n. 

Cajetan, Thos. de Vio, on the phrasQ 
" eternal fire," 203. 



472 



INDEX. 



Calixtus, Geo., on Rom. viii. 10, 
175, n. 

Calmet, A., on the Pharisees, 223, n. 

Calovius, A., on Wisd. ii, 23, 166, 
n. ; on Rom. viii. 10, 175, n. ; on 
the opinion of Justin, 315, n. 

Calvin, J., confesses a " horrible de- 
cree," 62, n. ; his theodicy, 72, n. ; 
on John iii. 36, 207 ; on the sleep 
of the soul, 259 ; warns Socinus, 
350 ; censures an argument for 
Christ's divinity, 404. 

Calvinistic doctrine of grace, 381. 

Campaigning sphit in missions, 437- 
440. 

Campbell, Geo., on Hades and Ge- 
henna, 210, n. 

Cardan, J., held preexistence,lll, n. 

Castalio, S., on Gen. ii. 17, 168, n. ; 
on 2 Tiiess. i. 9, 187. 

Cave, W., the intermediate state, 
255, n. ; on the " Martyriura " of 
Polycarp, 292, n. 

Chace, G. I., on the origin of the 
soul, 229, n. 

Chalmers, T., his theodicy, 114 ; on 
the divine Avrath, 151, n. ; redemp- 
tion perhaps wrought in various 
w^orlds, 154, n. ; criticises an ar- 
gument for immortality, 230, n.; 
the moral argument for immortal- 
ity, 236, n. ; extols Warburton, 
351. 

Channing, W. E., his view of future 

punishment, 354. 
Charlotte Elizabeth. See Tonna. 
Charnock, S., his theodicies, 77, n., 

90, n., 114, n. 
Cheever, G. B., a dualistic passage, 

49, 50. 
Chiliasm, in Irenseus, 258. 
Chinese doctrines of future life, 265, 

266. 

Christ, a Life-giver, 172-176, 226; 
not a teacher of negations, 225, 
226 ; in the doctrine of atonement, 
397-399 ; his death not alone the 
ground of salvation, 403 ; argu- 
ment for his divinity, 403, 404 ; 
why rejected by the Jews, 458, 
459 ; may be rejected in name but 
not in deed, 466, 467. 

Christian, theory of man's dignity. 



5-7 ; benevolence regards individ- 
uals, 436. 

Christian Spectator, no eternal prog- 
ress in wickedness, 127 ; God 
prefers not sin, 134, n. 

Cln-istianity called " tremendously 
true," 15. 

Christians, the early, charged with 
dualism, 37 ; their doctrine of fu- 
ture life, 288-308 ; of the soul's 
intermediate nature, 308-312 ; an 
order of nobility, 435, 6. 

Chrysippus, on immortality, 285. 

Chrvsostom, finds prolepsis in Col. 

11. ' 13, 175, n. 

Church, maternal character of the, 
432-434 ; nature and limits of her 
responsibility, 441, 442, 445. 

Cicero, his doubts on future life, 8, 
279, 280, 281 ; cited on Matt. iii. 

12, 197, n. ; on 2 Pet. ii. 17. 210 ; 
states Pythagoras' doctrine of the 
soul, 269 ; sanctions the pious 
fraud, 277, 278 ; on the Stoic doc- 
trine, 285, n. ; cited on the term 
" exitium," 341, n. 

Clarius, I., on Gen. ii. 17, 170, n. 

Clarke, Adam, on Jude, ver. 7, 203 ; 
on Rev. xix. 3, 213 ; the immor- 
tality of brutes, 230, n. ; Jewish 
doctrines, 287, 288. 

Clarke, John, his reply to Bayle, 45, 
46 ; his theodicy, 102, n. 

Clarke, J. P., on the sense of sin, 
372. 

Clarke, Samuel, criticises Dodwell, 
302. 

Clavering, R., account of Maimon- 

ides, 340. 
Clement of Rome, cited on 2 Pet. 

ii. 17, 208; the "Recognitions" 

ascribed to, 255, n. ; his opinions, 

289, 290. 

Clement of Alexandria, his opinions, 
321, 322. 

Clerc, J. le, his reply to Bayle, 42, 
43 ; his theodicy, 109, n. ; on 2 
Thess. i. 9, 187; on Isa. xxxiii. 
14, 206 ; approves Locke's reply 
to Worcester, 351. 

Cocceius, J., on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187 ; 
on Rev. xix. 3, 213. 

Coleridge, S. T., criticises a theod* 



INDEX. 



473 



icy, 110, n. ; states a theodicy, ! 
121 ; virtue disinterested, 451, n. ; 
his distinction of prudence, moral- 
ity, and religion, 463 ; on faith 
and immortality, 465. 

Confucius did not recognize immoi'- 
tality, 265, 266. 

Conscience, remarks on, 417, 418; 
law, but not life, 463. 

Consciousness, not a cause of iden- 
tity, 248, 249 ; of the disembodied 
soul considered, 261, 262. 

Contrast of good and evil not crea- 
tive, 135. 

Convalescence, pains of a reason for 
the incarnation, 402, 403, 

Conversion, causes of spurious, 417 ; 
of the world not the true mission- 
ary motive, 438. 

Conviction of sin not favored by 
mystery in penalty, 416-418. 

Conybeare and Howson, on 1 Tim. 
vi. 20, 35 ; on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187. 

Coquerel, A., his theodicy, 114, n. 

Corruption, import of the term, 183, 
184. 

Cotelerius, J. B., on the Apostolical 

Constitutions, 396. 
Cousin, v., on Locke's philosophy, 

246, n. ; criticises an opinion of 

Leibnitz, 248, n. 
Creation, why not sooner? 153, n. ; 

design of, 433, 434. 
Criminal code of England, reform 

of, 411-414. 
Crisis of fall and redemption, 388. 
Crousaz, J. P. de, his reply to Bayle, 

45 ; his theodicies, 77, n., 92, n., 

101, n, ; a petitio principii, 98, n.; 

divine goodness a gratuity, 110. 
Cruse, C. F., his translation of nvp 

uadeoTov, 198, n. ; of u<pdapcta, 

293, n. 

Crusius, on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187. 

Cudworth, E., on the Pythagorean 
doctrine, 32, n., 269, 270 ; on im- 
mutable morality, 68 ; God's om- 
nipotence favorable to man's free- 
dom, 151, n. ; Aristotle's doctrine 
of the soul, 274 ; on the Epicure- 
ans, 278. 

Cumming, J., on the fear of Purga- 
tory, 425, n. 



Cyprian, his views and influence, 
328. 

Cyril, supposes that the saved re- 
joice over the lost, 328 ; his opin- 
ions and influence, 328 ; his fanat- 
icism, 332. 

Damnation, sense of the term, 194. 

Daniel, H. A., on the opinion of 
Justin, 315, n. 

Daubuz, C, on Eev. xxii. 11, 207 ; 
on Rev. xiv. 11 ; xix. 3, 212, 213. 

Davidson, S., argues from tlie Book 
of Enoch, 217 ; his remarks on 
the book, 218, 219. 

Davy, Sir H., held preiixistence, 
111, n. 

Dean, R., the immortality of brutes, 
230, n. 

Death, the only effective penal sanc- 
tion, 92, 93 ; the proper penalty 
of sin, 150, 152, 380; designed 
that sin might not be perpetual, 
171, 820; defined as annihilation 
by Rothe, 146, n., 159, n. ; scrip- 
tural use of the term, 166-173, 
177, 197,419 ; death in trespasses 
and sins, what, 175, 176 ; the 
"second death," 178, 179 ; ter- 
rors of, 420, 425 ; general doc- 
trine of death, 382-389; physical 
death, is it of nature"? 167, 253, 
382-384, 389 ; of the saved not 
penal, 394, 395 ; deatli as penalty 
solves certain difficulties, 394, 395, 
399. 

Debt, or gi-ace, is immortality? 1-7, 
385 ; the Redemption claimed as 
due, 107-111 ; grace alleged to be 
due, 380, 381. See Grace. 

Deism, a reaction from the doctrine 
of eternal suffering, 63 ; induces 
naturalism, 64, 65. 

Depravity, sense of affecting the 
doctrine of punishment, 367, 368 ; 
native, 390. 

Despotism, and the prostration of 
f\iith, 63. 

Destruction, import of the term, 
181-183, 187. See Extinction. 

Didymus of Alexandria, a restora- 
tionist, 325. 

Dignity, of human nature, 1-18 ; en- 
hanced by the power to choosa 



474 



INDEX. 



immortality, 454; of wickedness, 
deduced, 16-18,409, 416; of eter- 
nal suffering', 17, 418. 
Diodorus of Tarsus, a restorationist, 
325. 

Diodorus Siculus, cited on Jude, 
ver. 7, 204, n. ; doctrine of the 
Egyptians, 268. 

Diogenes Laertius, on the frailty of 
evil, 143, n. ; anecdote of Plato, 
277 ; doctrine of the Stoics, 285. 

Diognetus, the epistle to, first use of 
the phrase " immortal soul," 298, 
299 ; and " eternal fire," in what 
sense, 299. 

Dionysius of Alexandria, perhaps a 
restorationist, 324. 

Dionysius, the Areopagite, on the 
frailty of evil, 143, n. 

Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, argu- 
ment for immortality, 237 ; doc- 1 
trine of the Stoics, 285, n. 

Distrust, universal, as a theodicy, 
83-85. 

Divine government, sin against the, 
as a theodicy, 80-83 ; divine im- 
age in man, proves what? 166; I 
divine nature of Christ, argument 
for, 403, 404. 

Dobney, H. H., argues extinction, 
353. 

Doddridge, P., on John iii. 36, 207. 

Dods, J. B., on immortality, 270. 

Dodwell, H., his theodicy, 80, n.; 
on Luke xx. 36, 161, n. ; his opin- 
ions, 352. 

Doederlein, criticises a theodicy, 76, 
n. ; on the oiDinion of Justin, 
315, n. 

Draco, character of his code, 370, 
371 ; its effect, 412, n. 

Dramatic use of terms denoting pun- 
ishment, 191, 193, 206, 215, 373. 

Dressel, A. R. M., on tlie " Martyr- 
iura " of Polycarp, 292, n. 

Drew, S., his arguments for immor- 
tality, 228. 

Drexei, J., his theodicy, 99, n. 

Dschelaleddin, a Mohammedan du- 
alist, 39, n. 

Dualism, defined, 25 ; a form of ab- 
solutism, 60 ; involved in the no- 
tion of eternal evil, 27-29, 47, 48, 



152, 154; its history: the Per- 
sians, 30 ; with them not eternal, 
267; Pythagoras, 31, 32; Plato, 
33 ; Philo, 33, . 34; Plutarch, 34, 
35 ; the Gnostics, 35; Tatian, 35; 
Tertullian, 35, 36 ; Manes, 36-38 ; 
Lactantius, 38, 39 ; Synesius, 39 ; 
Abulfeda and Dschelaleddin, 39 ; 
Duns Scotus, 40 ; Milton, 40 ; 
Abp. King, 40, 41 ; Bayle, and 
replies made to him, 41-47 ; Ham- 
ilton, 48 ; Bailey, 49 ; "two-seeds," 
49 ; Cheever, 49, 50 ; may yet re- 
vive, 48, n., 368, n. ; involved in 
various theodicies, 75, 76, 80, 87- 
89, 95, 96, 100, 102, n., 103, 107, 
118-121, 123; alleged in revela- 
tion of the divine nature, 137, n. ; 
involved in a certain theory of vir- 
tue, 140 ; to which answers Mil- 
I ton's paraphrase of Gen. iii. 5, 
285 ; not avoided by Bledsoe, 149 ; 
in the estimate of numbers saved 
or lost, 438, 439 ; causes of, 278, 
279 ; leads to devil-worship, 362, n. 
Dublin University Magazine, Ara- 
I bian contributions to Ciiristian 
theology, 344, 345. 
Duffield, Geo., doubts the applica- 
tion of Matt. XXV. 31-46 to the 
final judgment, 193, n. 
Du Pin, L. E., on the opinion of 

Justin, 315, n. 
" Duration of Evil," author of, on 

the causes of scepticism, 378, n. 
Duty, imperative, considered as a 
theodicy, 91-93 ; requires not im- 
mortaliW, 236, 237, 345. 
Dwight, T., cautions respecting be- 
lief in endless woe, 62, n.; his 
theodicy, 113, 114; on the hope 
of immortality, 351, n. 
Eckermann, J. P., cited, 386, n. 
Economy, the supposed, of eternal 

suffering, 82. 
Edwards, J., the Elder, Bayne's re- 
mark on his faith, 56, 57 ; bur- 
dened with the thought of eternal 
suffering, 57 ; on the divine holi- 
ness, 68, n. ; differences in infin- 
ity, 72 ; his theodicies, 72, n., 
207 ; opinion that the saved re- 
joice over the lost, 137, n. ; on 



INDEX. 



475 



Rev. xxii. 11, 207 ; moral argu- 
ment for immortality, valid for 
that of the righteous, 235, n. ; 
hyperbolical use. of the term " in- 
finite," 365. 

Edwards, J., the Younger, his theod- 
icy, 114, n. ; annihilation is eter- 
nal punishment, 419. 

Egyptians, their doctrine of future 
"life, 267, 268. 

Eiclihorn, J. G., on Rev. xxii. 11, 
208 ; on Rev. xix. 3, 213. 

Eisenmenger, J. A., cited, 287, 288, 
338, n.,^341, n. 

Eleatics, their doctrines, 270. 

Election, of life by man, 452-456 ; 
of man by God, 454, 455. 

Emmons, N., opinion that God's 
justice requires sin, 131, n. ; his 
theodicy, 93, 94. 

Emotions, in theology, 365-367 ; the 
painful only temporary, 434-436. 

Enoch, the Book of, cited on the 
eternity of effect, 195 ; on Jude, 
ver, 13, 209 ; use of the word 
" etei-nal," 210 ; Stuart's argu- 
ment from, stated and examined, 
216-219. . [evil, 144, n. 

Ephraem, Syrus, on the frailty of 

Epictetus, on the frailty of evil, 143 ; 
denies an after life, 282. 

Epicureans, their maxim, 270 ; hu- 
mored the popular religion, 278. 

Epiphanius, on the deatii of Adam, 
171, n. ; censures Marcion, 258; 
on the opinion of Methodius, 
324, n. 

Episcopius, S., on Jude, ver. 7, 203. 

Erbkam, H., remark on dualism, 
30, n. ; denies free-will to the lost, 
134, n. ; an absolutist, 137, n. 

Erasmus, on John iii. 36, 207 ; de- 
nounces Averroes, 344 ; on Rom. 
vi. 23, 385, n. 

Esoteric doctrine, modern, 354, 355. 

Estius, ^Y., on Col. ii. 13, 175, n. 

Eternal misery, not needed as an 
example, 8, 82 ; confessedly not 
'due to original sin, 107-111 ; how 
first l)elieved among Christians, 
312-318, 325; moral causes of 
the doctrine, 357-376 ; not as- 
serted in funerals, 414 ; not a mo- 
tive in early Christianity, 415, 



416 ; its supposed effect, 415, 416. 
See Evil, Punishment. 

Eternal sinfulness, as a theodicy, 
113-119, 359. 

Eternity, not required for sensible 
punishment, 88, 89 ; of final pun- 
ishment, admitted, 160 ; of ciiect, 
195-197, 202-204, 210, 338; of 
the soul, asserted in the Bhagavad 
Gita, 267; by Pythagoras, 269 ; 
by Plato, 272 ; by Le Roux and 
De Wette, 355 ; the Buddhists' 
estimate of Eternity, 426, n. 

Ethical theology, defined, 117,118; 
considered, 378, 388, 389 ; its 
highest form, 393, 394 ; the " wis- 
dom " of the Greeks, 463, n. 

Eusebius, use of tlie phrase " un- 
quenchable fire," 197, 198, 292 ; 
cited, 285, n. ; a restorationist, 
325. [189. 

Eustathius, on the sense of Kolamc, 

Evangelical Alliance, remark on its 
Prize Essay, 64, n. 

Evil, how consistent with the divine 
attributes, 19, 25, 26 ; triple prob- 
lem of, 21, 22; not needful, 41, 
129-141 ; temporary, 129-159 ; 
frail, 141-146 ; its permission, 
147-152 ; not appointed that good 
may come, 132-134, 381 ; nega- 
tive and positive, 372, 373 ; moral, 
Avorse than physical in kind ; in 
degree not comparable, 97 ; tem- 
porary and eternal, contrasted, 
147, 148, 152-156, 360; may be 
eternal, but not fixed, 154-156; 
its mystery no argument for its 
eternity, 361, 362 ; its advantages 
over good, 362, 363. Sec Dual- 
ism. [180, 213, 339, 341. 

Excision, import of the term, 179, 

Extermination, apparently asserted 
in the epistle to Diognetus, 297; 
called the greatest of all punisii- 
ments, 342. 

Extinction (or annihilation), evil 
tends to, 141-146; the analogue 
of disintegration, 238 ; alleged to 
be worse than existence in pain, 
103, 104 ; regarded as an evil, 
275 ; is penal, 384, 387, 430, 431 ; 
is eternal punishment, 95, 98, 
418-420, 424, 425 ; admits dc- 



476 



INDEX. 



grees of sufferino:, 400, 421-423; 
ten-ors of, 420-425; implied by 
ortliodox writers as the ori<jinal 
penalty, 107, 111, n. ; not forbid- 
den by divine power, 129 ; or jus- 
tice, isO; or holiness, or mercy, 
131 ; regarded by K«the as "death 
in the New Testament sense," 146, 
Ti., 159 ; of Satan apparently de- 
clared, 289, 296 ; Stoic and other 
doctrines of, 284-288 ; not de- 
nied by the Apostolical Fathers, 
288-295 ; held perhaps by Justin, 
315, n. ; plainly stated by Ire- 
nseus, 301; by Arnobius, 303, 304 ; 
a Jewish doctrine, 336, 337 ; held 
by various Jewish writers, 338, 
340-342 ; by the early Socinians, 
47 ; its effects in their case, 350, 
351, n, ; lield by various modern | 
writers, 352-354 ; its tendency j 
considered, 405-429. 

Pabricius, J. A., on the works of 
Athanasius 305, n. 

Faoius, P., on Gen. ii. 17, 171, n. 

Taith, its agony, 26, 50-57, 157, 407, 
408, 444 ; its prostitution or pros- 
tration, 26, 61-63 ; its eclipse, 26, 
63-66 ; its trial and triumph, 26, 
156-159 ; romance of, 56, 133, n.; 
without reason is power-worship, 
61 ; opposed not to reason, but to 
sense and passion, 348, 464 ; in 
second causes, a source of error, 
358, 359 ; lack of, in the power of 
goodness, 368-370 ; its nature and 
office, 463-467. 

Tall, doctrine of the, 388. 

Fatalism, unfriendly to happiness, 
455 ; involved in a certain view, 
387, 388. [scholarship, 367. 

Fathers, the early, their lack of 

Fear, and shame, compared as mo- 
tives, 405-409 ; of loss, salutary, 
408 ; of eternal misery, followed 
by paralysis, 409 ; not a normal 
Christian sentiment, 440, 441 ; 
fear in a mother, 434. 

Fearfulness of the common doctrine 
no proof of its truth, 357, 358. 

Fernald, W. M., a theodicy, 124- 
126. 



Feuardcntius calls Lutherans and 
others Sadducees, 259. 

Feuerbach, L., censures a " Chris- 
tian " theory of future happiness, 
136, n. ; denies immortality, 356. 

Ficinus, M., on the Pharisees, 224, n. 

Finney, C. G., his theodicy, 85, 86. 

Fire, import of the fiirure^ 184, 209, 
210,213,337-339,341 ; "eternal," 
use of the phrase, 200-204, 298, 
300, 314, 317, 323, 326, 361 ; " un- 
quenchable," 197-202, 205, 291, 

Fitch, J., his theodicy, 105. [292. 

Flatt, J. F., on Rom. viii. 10; Eph. 
ii. 1, 5, 175, n. 

Fleury, C, compulsion by Augus- 
tine, 332, n. 

Foe, Daniel de, his " Shortest way 
with Dissenters " an artifice, 411. 

Foster, J., his view of the current 
doctrine, 52, 53 ; alludes to the 
literal sense of " destruction," 53, 
n. ; Bayne's remark on his doubt, 
56 ; criticises certain theodicies, 
76, n., 122, 123. [267. 

Fraser, J., on the Persian doctrine. 

Fraud, the pious, 105, 106. 

Free-will, as a theodicy, 101, 102 ; 
supposed of the lost, 113-119 ; 
essential to character, 123 ; fa- 
vored by omnipotence, 151 ; how 
recognized in the Scriptures, 164, 
n. ; in the Augustinian contro- 
versy, 330; a moral faculty, 450; 
a higher form of life, 450, 463 ; as 
related to immortality, 452-456 ; 
a source of happiness, 455. 

Fritzsche, C. F. A., ou Rom. viii. 
10, 175, n. 

Fulgentius, his theodicy, 99, n. 

Fuller, A,, his theodicies, 72, n., 80, 
99, n. ; on Rev. xxii. 11, 208 ; on 
Rev. xix. 3, 213. 

Gelienna, distinct from Hades, 210, 
257, 259, 260; import of, 211, 
338, 341. 

Gerhard, J., his theodicy, 114, n. 

Gershom, R., apparently an extinc- 

tionist, 341. 
Gerson, J., an absolutist, 59, n. 

Gesenius, W., on excision, 179, 180. 
Gibbon, E., the pious fraud, 276. 



INDEX. 



477 



Gieseler, J. C. L., history of the 
jManichreans, 38; the opinion of 
Justin, 315, n. ; tlie early preva- 
lence of restorationisni, 325. 

Gillies, J., mistakes tiie eliaracter of 
Draco, 370. 

Gnostics, their doctrine of the soul, 
8 ; corrupting, 9 ; asserted im- 
mortality of "a class, 283-287 ; 
censured by Hippolytus, 298 ; by 
Irenfens, 9, 302 ; by Arnobius, 
30-i ; their dualism, 35 ; denied 
the intermediate state, 254, 257 ; 
and resurrection, 298 ; their rela- 
tion to Christian philosophy, 321. 

Goad by, Mr. of Sherburne, argu- 
ment of the inquisition, 333 ; an 
extinctionist, 352. 

God, the idea and the conception of, 
distinct, 22-25 ; his infinitude as a 
theodicy, 71-76 ; not inii)assible, 
76; incomprehensible, 77, 78; 
why not unhappy, 78, 79 ; his 
power requires not sin, 129 ; nor 
his justice, 130 ; nor his holiness, 
131 ; nor his mercy, 131 ; his per- 
mission of evil, 147-152 ; his for- 
bearance, 150, 151 ; his existence, 
how assumed in the Scriptures, 
162-164 ; his emotions, 427, 428. 

Goethe, J. W., von., makes Satan a 
servant, 18 ; satirizes the liope of 
immortality, 355, 356. 

Goodness, as a converting power, 
368-370; and justice as elements 
of virtue, 456-461. 

Goodwin, E. S., on the sense of 
aiu)VLog, 188. 

Goodwin, Thos., evil tends to non- 
existence, 145. [104, n. 

Gordon, extinction the greatest evil. 

Gospel, use of the term, 369 ; min- 
istry of, a common duty, 443, 
467 ; for the heathen, 443-445. 

Government, sin against the divine, 
as a theodicy, 80-83 ; human 
compared with divine, 372, 385. 

Grace, the sphere of sovereignty, 69 ; 
not charged as a debt, 79, SO; 
drafts upon, in theodicv, 79, 80, 
82, 100, 108-111, 380, "381, 389 ; 
immortalitv gratuitous, 236, 237, 
242, 301, 305, 385; sense of the 
term, 379 ; its relation to justice, 
380; perversions of, 381 ; punish- 



ment alleged to be of, 391, 392 ; 
of immortality, to be freely ac- 
cepted, 453. See Redemption. 

Grecian schools, prone to dualism, 
31 ; on future life, 269-275. 

Gregory Nnzianzen, probably a res- 
torationist, 325. 

Gregory Nyssen, on the frailty of 
evil, 144 ; a restorationist, 325. 

Gregory Thaumaturgus, a restora- 
tionist, 324. 

Gregory the Great, his theodicies, 
94, n., 99; opinion that the saved 
rejoice over the lost, 136, n. ; that 
evil tends to non-existence, 145. 

Gresset, J. B. L., cited, 134. 

Grote, G., on the punishment of 
things, 191, n.; the character of 
Draco's code, 370. 

Grotius, H., on Wisd. ii. 25, 166, n. ; 
on Gen. ii. 17, 169 ; on 2 Thess. i. 
9, 187; Matt. xxv. 46, 189, n. ; 
on Isa. xxxiii. 14, 205 ; opinion 
of Kimchi and Bechai, 288; of 
Justin, 315, n. ; of Menasseh ben 
Israel, 341, n. ; on Rom. vi. 23, 
385, n. ; his view of atonement, 
398. [255, n. 

Giider, E., on the intermediate state. 

Guilt, true measure of, 88, 98. 

Hades, distinct from Gehenna, 210, 
257, 259, 260. 

Hagenbach, K. R., on a passage of 
Lactantius, 39;' cited, 311, 325, 
n., 347, n. 

Ham, J. P., argues extinction, 353. 

Hamilton, R. W., dualistie expres- 
sions of, 48, 373 ; criticises a the- 
odicy, 76, n.; his theodicies, 1 14, n., 
120, n.; mistranslations, 290, 293; 
other errors, 292, 3, 305, n.; his 
work alluded to, 353: argument 
from the atonement, 364, n. ; from 
an assertion of sceptics, 378, n. ; 
denies man's intermediate nature, 
378, 384 ; describes extinction as 
eternal punishment, 424, 428. 

Hamilton, Sir W., cited, 233, n. ; 
life the true good, 448. 

Hammond, H., on Rom. viii. 10, 
175, n. ; on the phrase "second 
death," 179 ; on 2 Thess. i. 9, 
187 ; on Mark ix. 49, 200, 201 ; 
on Jude, ver. 7, 203. 

Happiness, does not require misery. 



478 



INDEX. 



134-137 ; less named in the Scrip- 
tures than life, 172, 173; consists 
in real life, 447, 448. 
Hurmer, T., on the credibility of 

Josephns, 288, 335. 
Harris, S., his theodicies, 94, n., 

102, n., 128, n. 
Hartley, D,, a reply to, cited, 41. 
Hase, C., on Montanism, 35, 36 ; 
Manes, 36, 37 ; Lactantius, 39 ; 
Bayle, 42, n. ; the opinion of Jus- 
tin, 315, n. 
Heathens, salvable, 239, 465, 466; 
how they regard eternal sufferin^^, 
443-445. [trine, 268. 

Heeren, A. H. S., on Egyptian doc- 
Hell, denied to be a state of prog- 
ress, 125, 128, n. 
Hengstenberg, E. "W,, remark on 
Ps. xcii. 7, 187 ; on Jude, ver. 7, 
204, n.; on Rev. xxii. 11, 208, n.; 
on Rev. xix. 3, 213. 
Henry, M., on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187 ; on 
Isa, xxxiii. 14, 206 ; on Rev. xxii. 
11,208. [433. 
Herbert, Geo., the method of grace. 
Hernias, his opinions, 293-295. 
Herodotus, on Egyptian doctrine, 
267, 268. 

Hickok, L. P., regards God as bound 

not to annihilate, 386. 
Hindoos, their views of future life, 

9, 266, 267, 277 ; hardly dualists, 

31. 

Hinton, J. H., reason for repentance, 
13 ; his theodicies, 94, n., 101, n., 
105 n., 109, n.; on Luke xx. 36, 
161; his work alluded to, 353; 
argues eternal suffering from the 
atonement, 364. 

Hippolytus, censures the Gnostics, 
298 ;' his opinions, 323, 324 ; au- 
thor of the so-called " Discourse 
concerning Hades," 336. 

Hobart, J. H. (Bp.), on the inter- 
mediate state, 255, n. 

Hobbes, T., an absolutist, 59, n. ; 
on the nature of virtue, 451, n. 

Homer, not a dualist, 33 ; cited on 
Matt. iii. 12, 197, n. 

Hooker, 11., liis theodicy, 72. 

Hopkins, S., his theodicies, 72, n., 
89; criticises a theodicy, 119; 
opinion that God's holiness re- 



quires sin, 131, n. ; that the saved 
rejoice over the lost, 136. 

Howe, J., moral argument for im- 
mortality, 235. 

Huet, P. Dan., on the opinion of 
Justin, 315, n. 

Huidekoper, F., on the intermediate 
state, 255, n. 

Human nature, its dignity, 1-18, 
377, 454. 

Huntington, J., his theodicy, 72, n. 

Hyperbole, in theology, 365-367. 

Identity in the resurrection, six the- 
ories of, 247-250. 

Idolatry, why called adultery, 427 ; 
of goodness, 457-459 ; of justice, 
459-461. 

Ignatius, his opinions, 290, 291. 

Immortality, is it due or gratuitous ? 
1-7, 236, 237, 38.5, 451, 4.52; in 
what sense natural, 2, 165, 166, 
242 ; various views of, 3-15 ; if 
unimpaired, a power of self-salva- 
tion, 117, 118, 393, 394 ; of the 
soul, or the race, not assumed in 
the Scriptures, 160-165 ; nor im- 
plied, 165-171 ; of the lost, sup- 
posed proofs of, 185-216 ; rational 
proofs of,' 225-242 ; connected 
with the resurrection, 255, n., 262, 
263 ; ancient doctrine of, 265-283 ; 
why doubted by the philosophers, 
276 ; of a class, fourfold doctrine, 
283-288 ; early Christian doctrine, 
288-308 ; Gnostic, 8, 9, 298 ; pa- 
tristic, 308-334 ; Jewish, 216-220, 
224, 335-342 ; mediseval, 342-346; 
modern, 346-356 ; alleged to be 
constitutional, 378; to be mod- 
estly affirmed, 420 ; not imposed, 
452-456. [411,412. 
Impunity, the effect of severe laws, 
Imputation of Adam's guilt, 389. 
Incarnation, a reason for, 402, 403. 
Infanticide, early, prevalent, 10, 11, 
280. 

Infants, supposed to be punished 
Avithout remorse, etc., 128, n. ; to 
remain infants for ever, 128, n. ; 
to be annihilated, 352, 381 ; views 
of Augustine • and Pelagius re- 
specting, 331. See Sin, original. 

Infinite being of God, etc., as theod- 
icies, 71-80 ; motives, as a theod- 



INDEX. 



479 



icy, 104-107 ; guilt, theory of, ex- 
amined, 86, 89,^90, 419, 422 ; evil, 
offset by infinitely infinite good, 
155, 156 ; fi-ee use of the term, 
359 ; hyperbolical, ditto, 365 ; 
blessings, not due because infi- 
nite, 453. 

Infinities, choice of, as a theodicy, 
102, 103. [90, 36"3. 

Infinito, in suo, as a theodicy, 89, 

Infinity, pertains to no act of crea- 
tures, 74 ; in divine attributes, 75. 

Inquisition, defended from doctrines 
of eternal misery, 333 ; seeks 
Pomponatius, 346. 

Intermediate state, doctrine of, 253- 
263 ; called a detention, 254. 

Interpretation, rules of, 160, 377. 

Intolerance, when and how begun, 
331, 332. 

Irenteus, on the Gnostics, 8, 9, 302 ; 
the death of Adam, 171, n. ; the 
spiritual alone complete, 231 ; the 
intermediate state, 254 ; his chili- 
asm, 258; his opinions, 300-302; 
asserts conditional immortality, 

Irony, scriptural use of, 409. [301. 

Isidore of Pelusium, on Gen. ii. 17, 
169, n. 

Jackson, J., his gloss on Aristotle, 
274. [236, n. 

Jacobi, on duty and immortality, 

Jacquclot, I., replies to Bayle, 46. 

Jamblichus, on the prevalent belief 
in immortality, 279, 280. [59. 

Jansenists, censured as absolutists, 

Jarchi, S., his opinion, 341. 

Jehuda bar Elai, his opinion, 341. 

Jenks, Wm., on Rev, xxii. 11, 208. 

Jenyns, S., an absolutist, 60, n. ; 
held preexistence. 111, n. 

Jerome, allows preexistence, 111, n.; 
on Gen. ii. 17, 169 ; on Eph. ii. 1, 
175, n.; commends the learning 
of Arnobins, 302 ; on the opinion 
of Didymus, 325 ; censured by I. 
Taylor, 332 ; germs of Purgatorv, 
333, 334. [39, 60. 

Jesuits, paradox of their absolutism, 

Jews, and their rabbles, opinions of, 
192, 195, 196, 211, 216-225, 286- 
288, 335-342, 

Jochanan ben Zaccai, use of the 
word " eternal," 195, 338. 



Josephus, F., cited on Judo, ver. 7, 
204, n.; use of the word " eternal," 
210 ; on the character of the Piiiir- 
isees, 221 ; their doctrine, 224 ; 
his credibility impeached, 283, 
335, 336. 

Judith, argument from the Book of, 
219, 220. [331. 
Julian, controverts Augustine, 330, 
Jurieu, P., replies to Bayle, 46, 47 ; 
an absolutist, 46, 47, 131, n. ; cen- 
sured by Bossuet and Moehler, 
59, n. 

Justice, its principles not created, 
68-70 ; nor mysterious, 69-71, 
416-418; in God, infinite only in 
its range, 75 ; and regards due 
bounds, 386 ; supposed to require 
sin, 130 ; to God's feelings and to 
man's acts, distinct, 110; in tlic 
doctrine of punishment, 390-392 ; 
of pardon, 392-400 ; displayed in 
this world, 203, 399 : not vindic- 
tive, 399, 400, 420 ;' tempered by 
love, most fearful, 428, 429, 443, 
459 ; and goodness, as elements of 
virtue, 456-461. See Theodicy. 

Justin Martyr, on the intermediate 
state, 254; his chiliasm, 258; his 
character and opinions, 300, 313- 
318 ; asserts the soul's intermedi- 
ate nature, 309, 316 ; that immor- 
tality is not imposed, 453. 

Kant, I., sin a mystery, 21, n. ; on 
dualism, 29, n. ; criticises a theodi- 
cy, 76, n. ; asserts that permitted 
evil is ordained, 149 ; on meta])hys- 
ical arguments for immortality, 
228,229 ; on the severity of laws, 

412, n. 

Kanflfer, J, E. R., on Matt. viii. 22; 

Rom, viii. 10 ; Eph. ii. 1, 5 ; Col. 

ii. 13, 175, n. [315, n. 

Kaye, J., on the opinion of Justin, 
Kenrick, J., on Egyptian doctrine, 

268. [tin, 315, n. 

Kern, F. H., on the opinion of Jus- 
Kimchi, D., on the phrase " second 

death," 178, n. ; befriends Mai- 

monides, 340 ; an extinctionist, 

341. [tionist, 352. 

King, Edward, perhaps an cxtinc- 
King, W. (Abp.), on the value of 

existence, 14, n. ; his dualism, 40, 



480 INDEX. 



41 ; replies to Bayle, 44, 45 ; sin 
not the greatest evil, 96, n. ; his 
theodicies, 109, n., 119, 120, 127; 
denies the sinning of the lost, 124, 
n ; regards evil as mere imperfec- 
tion, 145, n. ; on the death of 
Adam, 171, n. 

Kingsley, C, a heathen's opinion of 
eternal suffering, 444, 445. [63. 

Kippis, A., anecdote of Shaftesbury, 

Kitto, J., on the credibility of Jo- 
sephus, 335, n. 

Knapp, G. C, on Gen. ii. 17, 169, 
n. ; criticises an argument for im- 
mortality, 230, n. 

Kuinoel. C. F., on Matt. iii. 12, 197 ; 
on Jolm iii. 36, 207. 

Lacoudre, A. N,, his theodicies, 72, 
n., 77, n., 80, n., 94, n., 114, n. 

Lactantius, his dualism, 38, 39, 137 ; 
his theodicy, 114, n. ; reduces evil 
to a small amount, 147, 148; his 
argument for immortality, 235, n.; 
tlie intermediate state, 255, n. ; 
censures the pious fraud, 378, n. ; 
and the Epicurean faith, 280 ; as- 
serts the soul's intermediate na- 
ture, 309, 310 ; remark upon, 330 ; 
immortality not imposed, 453, n. 

Lakish, R. Simeon ben, an extinc- 
tionist, 338. 

Lapide, Cornelius a, his theodicy, 
72, n. ; on Gen. ii. 17, 169, n. ; on 
Rev. xxii. 11, 208. 

Lardner, N., cited, 324, n., 325, n. 

Latiph, Ebn, on Prov. xxiv. 14,20, 
180; extinction the greatest pun- 
ishment, 342. fings, 137. 

Lavater, J. C, his love for all be- 

Law, of nature, as a theodicy, 119- 
121, 360; not annulled, but reen- 
acted by pardon, 395. See Pen- 
alty. 

Law, Edmund, the saved rejoice 
over the lost, 136 ; the earth a 
hospital, 154 ; the intermediate 
state, 255, n. 

Law, Wm., on Gen. ii. 17, 167, n. 

Lee, L., his arguments for immor- 
tality, 228. 

Leibnitz, G. W., regards brute souls 
as imperishable, human souls as 
immortal, 9, 10 ; his work on 
" Theodicy," in reply to Baylo, 



43 ; was it written in earnest ? 43, 

44 ; his theodicies, 86, n., 114, n., 
128, n. ; cited, 96, n., 130, n. ; 
evil only negative, 145; on iden- 
tity, 248 ; draft on divine grace, 
380,381. [278, n. 

Leland, J., on the pious fraud. 

Less, G., punishment threatened for 
effect, 106, n. 

Lessing, J. G. E., on eternal punish- 
ments, 44 ; held preexistence, 111, 
n. ; choice between the gift of 
truth and the love of it, 448. 

Lewis, Tayier, the battle of the uni- 
verse, 32; the phrase Tohu van 
Boliu, 208 ; argument from pre- 
vailing belief, 356. 

Life, immortality asserted not to be, 
12, 14 ; the proper reward of obe- 
dience, 93 ; the object of redemp- 
tion, 172, 173 ; sense of the word, 
171-177, 193, 206, 207, 226, 304, 
404 ; is active, 240 ; the true good, 
447, 448, 452. 

Lightfoot, J., on 1 Cor. v. 5, 183 ; 
on Acts ii. 24, 192; on Isa. Ixvi. 
24, 198 ; on John iii. 36, 207 ; on 
Luke xvi. 19-31, 257, n. [297. 

Liturgies, doctrine of the early, 295- 

Livy, account of a pious fraud, 278 ; 
oi heathen corruption, 415, n. 

Locke, J., argues extinction, 170; 
his allowance of materialism, 246 ; 
on identity, 248 ; on immortality, 
351. 

Lombard, P., asserts sin without ill- 
desert, 124, n. ; relaxation of fu- 
ture punisliment, 127, n. ; on lost 
infants, 128, n. ; that the saved 
rejoice over the lost, 135, 136. 

Lord, D. N., his theodicy, 99, n. ; 
argues eternal sin from the divine 
power, 129, 130. 

Lost, the immortal, supposed to be 
of use, 17, 18 See Theodicy. 

Love, infinite, as a theodicy, 76-80 ; 
in God, free and gratuitous, 79 ; 
its manifestations, 426-429 ; as- 
suages the grief it creates, 142 ; as 
compared Avith faith and hope, 
157 ; tlie highest form of good, 
467, 468 ; its own reward, 467, 
468 ; the philosopher's stone, 468. 

Lovett, H. W., an absolutist, 61, n. 



INDEX. 



481 



Lowman, "M., on Eev. xxii. 11, 207. 

Lowth, W., on Isa. xxxiii. 14, 206. 

Lucas Brug-ensis, his theodicies, 72, 
n. ; 99, n. 

Lucretius, cited by E. Law, 136, n. 

Liicke, on the Book of Enoch, 218. 

Luther, M., savors of absolutism, 
59, 348 ; on Isa. xxxiii. 14, 206 ; 
the intermediate state, 258 ; the 
papal assertion of the soul's im- 
mortality, 346 ; his view of Satan, 
347 ; difficulties with the doctrine 
of eternal misery, 347, 348 ; con- 
flict ere denouncing Rome, 349, 
350 ; illustration of the nature of 
faith, 464, n. 

McCosh, J., his theodicy, 122. 

Maccovius, J., sin not forgiven un- 
punished, 396. 

Mackintosh, J., cited, 59. 

Macknight, J., on Col. ii. 13, 175, 
n. ; on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187. 

Magee, "Wm. (Abp.), criticises a the- 
odicy, 76, n. 

Maimonides, interprets Gen. xvii. 14 
of extinction, 179; who inherit 
the world to come ? 196 ; his char- 
acter and opinions, 340-342. 

Malebranche, X., the lost partly for- 
given, 127, n. 

Man, wlien first called " mortal and 
immortal," 311. See Dignity. 

Manes, his system, 36, 37 ; dispute 
with Archelaus, 37, 38. 

Manichcean views of earth, 374. 

JNLanichiEans, their history, 38. 

Maniclia^ism, in Jewish doctrine, 286, 
287 ; of Augustine, 330. See Du- 
alism, [and eternal, 147, n. 

Mansel, H. L., on evil temporary 

Marsh J., psychological argument 
for immortality, 232. [121, 122. 

Martineau, J., picture of remorse, 

Materialism, examined, 243-253. 

Matter, how ubiquitous, 243, 244. 

Matthffii, C. F., on the credibilitv of 
Josephus, 336. 

Maud, J., asserts a divine dilemma, 
41 ; his theodicies, 99, n., 105, n. 

Maurice, F. D., on Persian doctrine, 
31 ; Chinese and Hindoo, 265, 
266 ; a supposed evil god natural- 
ly worshipped as supreme, 362, n. 

Maximus, St., a restorationist, 325. 

42 



]\L^yer, I., referred to, 341, n. 

Menasseh ben Israel, defends Maim- 
onides, 341 ; his opinion, 341. 

Menochius, J. S., deatli as prevent- 
ing immortal wretchedness, 171. 

Metaphysical arguments for immor- 
tality^ 225-231. 

^Methodism, I. Taylor on the past 
and the future, 158, 159. 

Methodius, on the death of Adam, 
171. n. ; probably a restorationist, 
324. [Kimchi, 341, n. 

Meuschen, J. G., on the opinion of 

Meyer, H. A. W., prolepsis in Matt, 
viii. 10 ; Col. ii. 13, 175, n. 

Michselis, J. D., on Rom. viii, 10, 
175, n. [279. 

iNIight, regarded as supreme, 278, 

Milman, H. H., censures Tertul- 
lian, 327. 

Milner, J., on Augustine's views of 
compulsion, 332, n. 

Milton, J., his picture of Satan du- 
alistic, 40 ; on the intermediate 
state, 255, n. ; version of Gen. iii. 
5, 285. 

Minucius Felix, his theodicy, 86, n., 
327 ; on the resurrection, 249, n. ; 
his opinions, 327. 
I Misinterpretation of divine penalty, 
and human mislegislation, com- 
I pared, 410, 416. 
Missionary spirit, 430-445. 
Mitford, W., mistakes the character 
of Draco, 370 ; on his code, 412, n. 
Mohler, A. J., criticizes a view of 
Beza, 131. [412, 413. 

iMontesquieu, on the severity of laws, 
! Moral argument for immortalitv, 234 
I -237. ' [n. 

I ]\rore, Henry, held preexistence, 111, 
' Morrison, R., on the doctrine of Con- 
fucius, 266. 
Morus, S. F. N., supposes improve- 
ment in hell, 128, n. 
Mosheim, J. L., his tlieodicy, 72, n.; 
on the opinion of Aristotle, 276, 
n. ; 344, n. 
Motives, infinite, as a theodicy, 104 
-107; as a means of conversion, 
373. [sephus, .335. 

Moyle, "\Y., on the credibility of Jo- 
Mtiller, J,, sin a mystery, 21, n. ; ac- 
count of dualism, 39, n., 40, n. ; 



482 



INDEX. 



distinction between evil temporary 
and evil eternal, 47 ; dualism may 
yet revive, 48, n., 368, n. ; on 
Blasche's absolutism, 61, n. ; 
Beza's, 130, n. ; Schleiermacher's, 
149, n. ; his tlieodicies, 92, n.. Ill, 
n. ; criticisms, 100, 110, n. ; 
sin tends to non-existence, 146 ; 
God's omnipotence favorable to 
freedom, 151, n. ; on Gen. ii. 17, 
170; on the proofs of immor- 
tality, 233, 234; the intermedi- 
ate state, 255, n., 256, n. ; " Satan 
as an ape of God," 361, 362. 
Miinscher, W., on the influence of 
Locke's philosophy, 246, n. ; the 
opinion of Justin, 315, n. ; Aver- 
roism, 344, n. [315, n. 

Miinter, F., on the opinion of Justin, 
Murdock, J., the Syriac Version, 

176, n., 226. 
Mystery, of sin, 20, 21 ; as argument 
for its eternity, 361, 362, 368 ; true 
of God's sovereignty, but not of 
his justice, 69-71, 454, 455; re- 
sorted to by Aucrustine, 330, 331 ; 
by Luther, 347-349 ; unfriendly to 
conviction, 416-418, 441, 442. 
Nachmanides, on Gen. ii. 17, 169, 
ji.; defends Maimonides, 340, 341 ; 
his opinion, 341. 
Natural immortality, in what sense 

true, 2, 165, 166,*'242. 
Naturalism, defined, 25 ; in a certain 
theodicy, 116-118 ; m the doctrine 
of punishment, 391. 
Nature, a law of, as a theodicy, 119 
-121, 360; made to restrict its 
Author, 118, 119, 121, 359. 
Neander, J. Aug., account of Syne- 
sius, 3-5 ; sin a mystery, 21, n. ; 
on Tertullian, 36, "326, 327 ; the 
Gnostics, 298, n. ; Arnobius, 302, 
303 ; Nicholas of Methone, 310 ; 
the opinions of Origen, 323 ; Greg- 
ory, Picrius, Thognostus, and 
Methodius, 324 ; Eusebius and 
Maximus, 325. 
Necessity, alleged as a ground of jus- 
tice, 81 ; of punishment, consid- 
ered, 400, 401. 
Ncmesius, held preexistence. 111, 
n.; the soul's intermediate nature, 
310 ; a restoratiouist, 325. 



Nevin, J. W., origin of the sonl, 
229, n. ; on the resurrection, 262, 
2G3. 

Newton, T., Bp., his theodicy, 102, 
n. ; on Eev. xix. 3,213; denies 
eternal suffering, 414, n. 

Nicholas of Methone, the soul's in- 
termediate nature, 310, 311 ; a 
restorationist, 325. 

Nicodemus, Gospel of, cited on the 
intermediate state, 255, n. 

Niemeyer, A. H., supposes improve- 
ment in hell, 128, n. 

Nitzsch, C. I., his theodicies, 94, n., 
114; sin tends to non-existence, 
145, 146 ; on Rev. xx. 13, 214. 

Norton, A., on the credibility of Jo- 
sephus, 335, n. ; the scepticism of 
Goethe, 355, 356. [nobius, 303. 

Nourry, N. C., on the opinion of Ar- 

Novatian, on the deatli of Adam, 
171, n. ; his influence and opin- 
ions, 328-330. 

Noyes, J. H., a Manichaean, 40, n. 

Numbers in the estimates of salva- 
tion, 436-440. 

Ockliam, Wm., an absolutist, 59. 

CEhler, F., on the opinion of Arno- 
bius, 303. 

Ol^hausen, H., on the longing for 
an end of evil, 48 ; his theodicy, 
114; the Scriptures silent on the 
immortality of the soul, 164. 

Optimism, of Leibnitz, 43 ; of Sais- 
set, 49. 

Origen, on a charge of Celsus, 37 ; 
held preexistence, lll,n.; on the 
intermediate state, 255, n. ; his 
restorationism, 322, 323, 325. 

Origin of evil a mystery, 20, 21. 

Otto, J. K. F., on the opinion of 
Justin, 315, n. [cide, 10. 

Ovid, on the prevalence of infanti- 

Owen, J., his theodicy, 72, n. [395. 

Pain, economy and doctrine of, 394, 

Paley, W., an absolutist, 59, n. ; on 
the state of the lost, 128, n. ; the 
severity of laws, 413. 

Pamphilus, a restorationist, 324. 

Pantlieism, defined, 25 ; often dual- 
istic, 48; a reaction from absolut- 
ism, 63 ; of Schlciermaclicr, 149, 
355 ; how avoidable, 250 ; of Le 
Roux, 355 ; of Feuerbach, 356. 



INDEX. 



483 



Paradise, early doctrine of, 255-260. 

Pardon, impossible in a certain the- 
odicy, 94, 95 ; in the ethical the- 
ology, 388 : in the universalist 
vie\v, 392, 394 ; doctrine of, 392- 
400 ; makes not void, but rcenacts 
law, 395 ; denied in the satisfac- 
tion theory, 396-399 ; best accords 
with the doctrine of death as pen- 
alty, 401, 402. [258. 

Parens, J).., his censure of Irenseus, 

Park, E. A., theology of the feel- 
ings, 366. 

Parker, T., commended by E. A. 
Thompson, 137 ; on the immortal- 
ity of brutes, 230, u. ; on Provi- 
dence, 379. [171, n. 

Patrick, S., on the death of Adam, 

Paul, moved not by the fear of eter- 
nal suffering, 435. 

Payne, Geo., his theodicy, 109, n. 

Pearson, J., argument from the 
atonement, 364, n. 

Pelagian view of death, 383. 

Pelagius, on the state of the lost, 
127, n. ; his opinions, 330, 331. 

Pellicanus, C., his theodicy, 99, n. ; 
on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187. 

Pelt, L., on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187. 

Penalties, choice of, as a theodicv, 
103, 104. 

Penalty, paradoxes of, 405-429. 

Perdition, sense of the term, 181-183. 

Persecution, how begun in the church, 
331, 332 ; how defended by the In- 
quisition, 213 ; of the Quakers by 
the Puritans, 411. 

Persians, their dualism, 30-32; on 
the frailty of evil, 142 ; restora- 
tionists, 267. [tality, 232-234. 

Personality, as argument for immor- 

Pharisees, did Christ sanction their 
doctrines, 220-226 ; their repute 
in the Talmud, 222 ; Josephus' 
account of their opinions, 224, 335, 
336. [269. 

Pherecydes, held the soul's eternity, 

Philo Judffius, origin of the soul, 3 ; 
prone to dualism, 33, 34 ; held 
preexistcnce. 111, n. ; his use of 
the phrase Ko}.acLQ a/wfiof, 188 ; 
salt a symbol of perpetuity, 201 ; 
cited oil Matt. iii. 12, 197/n. j on 



Jude, V. 7, 204, n. ; moral argu- 
ment for immortality, 241, 242. 

Photin>, on the opinion of Picrius 
and Theognostus, 324, n. ; of The- 
odore of Mopsuestia, 325, n. 

Phrcnsy, as a theodicy, 121-224. 

Pierius, a restorationist, 324. 

Piety, supposed in hell, 126. 

Pioiis fraud, history of, 276-283, 352. 

Plato, his doctrine of the soul, 3, 

272, 273 ; on the origin of evil, 
21, n. ; distinction of idea and con- 
ception, 23 ; his dualism, 32, 33, 

273, 274 ; the highest good, 68, n.; 
the frailtv of evil, 143 ; arguments 
for immortality, 227, 228, 232; 
held the soul's'eternity, 269, 272 ; 
only tyrants suffer for ever, 273 ; 
sanctions the pious fraud, 276- 
278 ; his Phado cited, 271, 280; 
notion of punishment for a thou- 
sand years, 313. [7, 8. 

Platonists, their hope of immortality, 
Plinv, the elder, despairs of an after- 
lifb, 282. 

Plotinus, combats Christians as Man- 
ichaeans, 37 ; held preexistence, 
111, n. ; the frailty of evil, 143, n. 

Plutarch, his dualism, 34, 35 ; denies 
that God permits evil, 148; cited 
on Matt. iii. 12, 197, n. ; on the 
opinion of Aristotle, 274 ; Chry- 
sippus' censure of Plato, 277 ; an- 
tiquity of belief in an after-life, 
279. 

Pocock, E., on the credibility of Jo- 
sephus, 335 ; on Jewish opinions, 
349 ; of Saadiah, 288 ; of Jarchi, 
Albo, and Menasseh ben Israel, 
341, n.; of Ebn Latiph, 342. 

Polycarp, his opinions, 291-293. 

Pompouatus, on Aristotle's opinion, 
275; his doctrine of virtue and 
immortality, 345, 346. 

Poole, M., his theodicies, 72, n.. 90, 
n., 99, n. ; on 2 Thess. i. 9, 187 ; 
on Eev. xxii. 11, 208; on Rom. 
vi. 23, 385, n. 
I Porphyry, the frailty of evil, 143, n. 

Post, "T." M., "immortality is not 
life," 14 ; use of the lost,' IS ; du- 
alistic reasoning, 49, 118, 119 ; his 
theodicies, 94, n., 118; supposes 



484 



INDEX. 



holiness may require sin, 131 ; on 
evil temporary and eternal, 147, 
153 ; eternal woe a salutary exam- 
ple, 157 ; on the sense of Kolaoig, 
188 ; arc^ues from supposed Jew- 
ish opinions, 216,220; from Ju- 
dith xvi. 17, 219 ; criticises an ar- 
gument for immortality, 230, n. ; 
his moral argument, 236, n. ; his 
essays alluded to, 354 ; denies that 
loss of immortality is penal, 384. 
Power, is it quality or substance? 
244, 245. 

Preexistence, as a theodicy, 111- 
113, 406 ; held by various writers, 
111, n., 270 ; arguments for, 240, 
389 ; criticised by Arnobius, 304 ; 
denied by Justin, 314. 
Pi'obation, for immortality, 1, 2, 165, 
166, 452-454 ; just terms of, 240 ; 
true view secured, 389. 
Proclus, the frailty of evil, 143. 
Prolepsis, defined, 168; explanatory 
of various passages, 168-170, 175 
-177. [ment, 17, 283. 

Prometheus, his sin and its punish- 
Pro vi den ce, doctrine of, 378, 379, 
388, 389. 

Prudcntius, the intermediate state, 
255, n. ; supposes few are lost, 334. 

Psychological argument for immor- 
tality, 231-234. [262. 

Psychopannychy, examined, 259- 

Punishment, its complex nature, 92 ; 
is it exemplary ? 106 ; made to be 
of grace, 106,"391, 392; measured 
not by desert, but by use, 105, n. ; 
asserted aside from demerit, 124, 
n. ; various views of eternal, 126, 
127 ; a reformed scriptural doc- 
trine of, predicted by I. Taylor, 
158, 159; admitted to be eternal, 
160, 187, 188; the term in Matt. 
XXV. 46, 188-194; dramatic use 
of the term, 191, 215; regarded 
as specially moral, 371, 372 ; of 
sense and of loss, an admitted dis- 
tinction, 385, 419, 420; general 
doctrine of, 390-392 ; desert and 
necessity of, distinct, 396, 399, 
400 ; degrees of, in anniliilation, 
400. See Annihilation, Death, 
Destruction, Eternal Misery, Ex- 



tinction, Justice, Penalty, Sever- 
ity. 

Punishments, use of the plural criti- 
cised, 405 ; future alleged by Pla- 
to insincerely, 277 ; I'cgarded as 
only a tradition, 280. 

Purgatory, not implied in an inter- 
mediate state, 258-260 ; rise of the 
doctrine, 322 ; why more feared 
than hell, 425, 426. 

Pyrrhonists, their scepticism, 270. 

Pythagoras, a dualist, 31,32; held 
the eternity of the soul, 269, 270. 

Quakers, why threatened with death 
by the Puritans, 411. 

Quenstedt, J. A., the saved do not 
pity the lost, 136. 

Eamsay, A. M. (Chev.), held the 
immortality of brutes, 230, n. 

Kational argument for immortality, 
225-242 ; and rationalistic argu- 
ments distinguished, 241. 

Rationalism, denies a crisis in man's 
history, 388. See Ethical Theolo- 
gy- 
Rationalist theory of human dignity, 
2-5 ; proofs of immortality, 234 ; 
doctrine of death, 383, 384. 

Rationalists, the Chinese, their views, 
266. 

Reason, in religion, 71 ; and faith in 
the middle ages, 345 ; and revela- 
tion, 377. [ation, 433. 

Recovery of man, preferred to re-cre- 

Redemption, claimed as due to man, 
100, 381 ; as a theodicy, 107-110 ; 
not the design of creation, 131- 
134 ; gives temporal death a new 
character, 395 ; more difficult than 
creation, 402 ; complete in Christ's 
resurrection, 403. [lian, 105. 

Reeves, Wm., translation of Tertul- 

Reiche, on Rom. viii. 10, 175, n. 

Repentance in God, what? 427. 

Reprobation, sense of the term, 240. 

Restorationism, favored by a certain 
theodicy, 115, 117; germs of in 
Athenagoras, 320, 321 : early prev- 
alence of, 324, 325; not due to 
Origen, 325 ; in Jewish docti ine ; 
in Germany, 353. [124-126. 

Restraint of the lost, as a theodicy, 

Resurrection, six theories of, 24-7- 



INDEX. 



485 



250 ; its relation to immortality, 
255, n., 2G2 ; nco^lcct of the doc- 
trine, 260; of the unjust, why? 
263, 364, 399, 400, 420, 428; Pela- 
gian doctrine of, 331 ; of Christ, 
essential, 350, 403 ; a crisis of re- 
demption, 389 ; makes death a ser- 
vant, 395. 
Revelation, alone assures immortali- 
ty, 343-346, 350, 351; See Im- 
mortality, [chi, 341, n. 
Rhenferd, J., on the opinion of Kim- 
Rich man and Lazarus, 210, 257. 

259. [128, n'. 

Ridgely, T., state of lost infants. 
Bitter, H., on Synesius, 39 ; the 
Manichaeans, 60, n. ; the Eleatics, 
270 ; the Ionics, 270 ; Plato, 272- 
274 ; Aristotle, 274, 275 ; the Sto- 
ics, 285 ; the Gnostics, 286, n.; the 
opinion of Justin, 315, n. 
Robinson, J., his theodicy, 72, n. 
Rogers, H., on future punishment, 
64, n.; criticises a theodicy, 76, n. 
Rom illy, S., in the reform of the 
criminal code, 413, 414 ; opposed 
by all classes, 413. 
Rosenmiiller, J. G., on Matt. iii. 12, 
197; on Jude, ver. 7, 203; on 
Rev. xxii. 11, 208. 
Ross, F. A., an absolutist, 60. 
Rossler, C F., on the opinion of Jus- 
tin, 315, n. [159, n. 
Rothe, R., an cxtinctionist, 146, n , 
Riickert, S. J., on Rom. viii. 10, 175, 
n. [324, n. 
Rufinus, on the opinion of Gregory, 
Ruperti, G. A., Jewish doctrine of 

extinction, 337. 
Ruskin, J., sin no cause of gratula- 
tion, 133 ; dualistic reasonings, 
133, n. 

Rutherford, S., an absolutist, 59, n. 

Saadiah Gaon, on Dan. xii. 2, 288. 

Saisset, E., his optimism, 49. 

Salt, a symbol of perpetuity, 200, 201 . 

Sallust, cited on Rev. xx'ii. 11, 208, 
ji. ; on the arguments of Catoand 
Cicero, 280. 

Salvation, why called life rather than 
happiness, 172, 173, 226 ; not from 
iuiinite evil, but for inlinite good, 
433, 445. See Self-salvation. 



Sanctification, confounded with jus- 
tification, 393, 394. 

Satan, made a servant of God, 18 ; 
called the left hand of God, etc., 
38, 49 ; an ape of God, 361 ; his 
kingdom recognized by Angus- 
tine, 29 ; as described b}' Milton, 
40 ; his destruction foretold, 289, 
296; how regarded in the middle 
ages, 346 ; supposed to have a 
claim on God, 401. 

Satisfaction for sin, impossible, 92, 
363, 364 ; by Christ, su|)posed to 
avail for the lost in part, 127, n. ; 
of divine justice, considered, 396- 
401. 

Saurin, J., immortality made fearful, 
15; degrees of eternal suffering, 
128, n. [278. 
Scoevola, sanctions the pious fraud. 
Scepticism, occasioned by the asser- 
tion of eternal woe, 56, 64, 378, n., 
407, 409. 

Schaf, P., his theodicy, 109, n. ; on 
the freedom of the lost, 116; the 
saved ignore their pains, 137. 

Schlegel, F. von, on Egyptian doc- 
trine, 268. 

Schleiermacher, F., his absolutism, 
149 ; his pantheism, 355 ; on Goe- 
the, 356, n. 

Schleusner, J. F., import of u^ioo), 
161, n.; of anathema, 181; on 1 
John iv. 18, 189. 

Schoettnen, C, cited, 178; on the 
Pharisees, 222, n. ; Talmudic doc- 
trine, 337, 338. [367. 

Scholarship, lack of in the Fathers, 

Schubert, G. H , on brute and hu- 
man souls, 231. [99, 100, 119. 

Scientia media Dei, as a theodicv, 

Scott, J., his theodicies, 101, n., 120, 
n. ; argument for immortality, 235. 

Scott, J. N., an cxtinctionist, 352. 

Scotus, Duns, a dualist, 40; criti- 
cises a theodicy, 76, n. ; held the 
immortality of brutes, 230, n. ; on 
human immortality, 343, 344. 

Scriptures, to be read anew — a pas- 
sage from I. Taylor, 158, 159; si- 
lent on the immortality of the soul, 
160-165. "[na, 210, n. 

Sears, E. H., on Hades and Gehen- 



486 



INDEX. 



Secretan, C, his theodicy, 114, n. ; 
criticises an argument for immor- 
tality, 230, n. [341, n. 

Selden, J., on Jewish opinions, 337, 

Self-salvation, power of, implied in , 
various views, 117, 118, 384, 388, 
393, 394, 401. 

Self-suspicion, as promoting the fear 
of eternal suffering, 374-^376. 

Scmiscli, C, on the opinion of Jus- 
tin, 317. 

Seneca, doubts an after-life, 8, n., 
281, 282 ; on evil that good may 
come, 134; the general belief in 
immortality, 279 ; corruptions of 
heathenism, 41.5. [ness, 448, 449. 

Sensation, the lowest form of happi- 

Serrarius, on the Pharisees, 224, n. 

Severity, of punishment, compared 
with certainty, 409-416 ; of laws, 
gives license, 411-414. 

Sfondrate (Card.), death in infancy 
better than redemption, 96, n. 

Shaftesburv, Earl of, avIiv a sceptic, 
63. " [fear. 40.5-409. 

Shame, as a motive, compared with 

Sliinn, Asa, eternal yet finite suffer- 
ing, 127. 

Silence of the Scriptures respecting 
a general immortality, 162-165. 

Simon ben Lakish, an extiactionist, 
338. 

Sin, a mystery, 20, 21 ; punished, 

still an evil, 27, 28 ; historical 

eternity of, as a theodicy, 94-98 ; 

as the greatest evil, ditto, 96-99 ; 

eternal, ditto, 113-119, 207, 381 ; 

outstrips punishment, 118, 119; 

denied, 119, 123, n. ; not of God, 

120; how permitted, 150, 151; 

original, doctrine of, 389, 390. 

See Evil, Guilt. 
Slavcholding, in absolutist docti'ine, 

60 ; in relation to goodness and 

justice, 461. 
Smith, Elias, an extinctionist, 353. 
Smith, J. P., his theodicy, 72, n. ; 

on the opinion of Justin, 315, n. ; 

on Kimchi, 341. 
Smith, T. S., an absolutist, 61, n. ; 

his view of punishment, 391, 392 ; 

of pardon, 392, 394. 
Socinus, P., his views, 350 ; on the 



death and resurrection of Cin'ist, 
403. [365. 
Socinianism, occasion of, 360, 364, 
Socinians, tlieir character, 350, 351. 
Socrates, his doctrine of the soul, 
271, 272; extensive doubt of its 
immortality, 280. [n. 
Solinus, cited on Jude, ver. 7, 204, 
Soul, its immortality not assumed in 
the Scriptures, 160-165 ; rational 
argument for, 225-242 ; immate- 
riality as argument for, 230 ; is it 
simple or complex 1 229 ; its ori- 
gin, 229; God its life, 233, 301- 
303, 307, 311, 316, 318; Hebrew 
and Greek terms for, 250-252 ; a 
discinct substance, 245-253 ; its 
eternity asserted bv the ancient 
philosophers, 266, 267, 269, 270 ; 
by Le Koux and De Wette, 355 ; 
when first called immortal by a 
Christian writer, 298, 299 ; its in- 
termediate nature, 301, 303, 307- 
311, 315, 320, 382, 387; its im- 
mortalitv, when first made an ar- 
ticle of faith, 345. 
Souls of brutes, regarded as immor- 
tal by various writers, 9, 10, 230. 
Sovereignty, divine, its sphere, 69 ; 
consistent with man's free-will, 
454, 455. [244. 
Space and time as related to mind, 
Sparks, J., allusion to annihilation, 
354. 

Spinoza, B., his theodicy, 72, n. ; ar- 
gument for the soul's eternity, 232. 

Spirit, Hebrew and Greek terms for, 
250-253 ; distinguished from soul, 
8,230,231. [tal, 360, 361. 

Spirits, evil, supposed to be immor- 

Spiritual death, no sign of immortal- 
ity, 177. 

Spiritualism, allusion to, 245 ; Stil- 

ling's remark, 260, n. 
Spurious conversion, promoted by 

the doctrine of eternal miserv, 417, 

441. 

Squier, M. P., why God not unhap- 
py, 78 ; denies that God permits 
sin, 148 ; sin not of God, 152. 

Starck, J. H., on the opinion of Jus- 
tin, 315, n. [465, n. 

Starr, W. H., on the nature of faith, 



INDEX. 



487 



I Staadlin, on the Pharisees, 221, 
,1 Stephen, J., the notion of endless 
I " misery an occasion of scepticism, 
56, n., 65, 66 ; on the sense of 
Kohiaig, 189 ; the difficulties of 
Luther, 349, 350 ; offers the view 
of extinction, 353. 
Stilling, H. J., on the intermediate 

state, 259, 260. 
Stobffius, account of Teles, 277. 
Stockcll, God forgives not, 396. 
Stoics, their doc^trines, 7, 270; of 
conditional immortality, 283-285. 
Storrs, Geo., argues extinction, 354. 
Storrs, R. S., origin of, 229, n. 
Strabo, cited on jude, ver. 7, 204, n.; 

censures Plato with the Brahmins, 
^ 277. [356. 
Strauss, D. P., denies an after-life. 
Strong, N., an absolutist, 61, n. ; 
Satan not wholly false, ib. ; the 
saved rejoice over the lost, 137, n. 
Stuart, M.-, betrays the agony of 
fi\ith, 51, 374 ; on Rev. xxii. 11, 
208 ; on Rev. xix. 3 ; xx. 9, 213 ; 
on Rev, XX. 13, 214 : argues from 
the Book of Enoch, 217, 218. 
Suicide, why practised by the Stoics, 
Superstition, defined, 460. [10. 
Swedenborg, E., on the state of the 
lost, 124^ 127, 128, n.; the mar- 
riage of angels, 462, n. 
Svbilline Leaves, hint of conditional 
'immortality, 296, 297. [17, 169. 
Symmachus. version of, on Gen. ii. 
Synesius, a Platonist, 3-5 ; held pre- 
existence, 4, 111, n, ; reckoned a 
dualist, 39 ; sanctions the pious 
fraud, 278, n. ; probably a restor- 
ationist, 325. 
Tacitus, on the prevalence of infan- 
ticide, 10; cited on Jude, ver. 7, 
204, n. ; immortality of the good, 
285, n. ; a Jewish opinion, 336. 
T;ilmud, the, on the character of the 
Piiarisees, 222, 223 ; cited on Luke 
xvi. 19-31, 257, n. ; its doctrine 
• of future punishment, 337-339. 
Targuras, their use of tiie phrase 
"second death," 178, 179, 198; 
of " gehenna," 209, 211: on fu- 
ture iife, 287. 
Tatian, an ascetic, 35, 51 ; censure 
of Aristotle, 269 ; on the soul's 



intermediate nature, 309 ; asserts 
eternal torment, 309 ; his charac- 
ter and opinions, 318, 319. 

Taylor, D. T., on the intermediate 
state, 255, n. ; the conversion of 
the world, 440, n. 

Taylor, Isaac, on human dignity, 13, 
104, n. ; predicts a new interpre- 
tation of the Scriptures on future 
punishment, 158, 159 ; on the 
scriptural proofs of immortality, 
188 ; criticises an argument for 
immortality, 230, n. ; the moral 
argument, 236, n. ; on speculative 
materialism, 246, n. ; on the su- 
premacy of conscience, 279; cen- 
sure of Ambrose, Augustine, and 
Jerome,' 322 ; on the missionary 
motive, 436, 437, 439, 440. 

Taylor, Jeremy, excuses Montanus, 
36, n. ; his theodicy, 109, n. ; the 
intermediate state, 255, n.; man's 
intermediate nature, 310 ; on the 
opinion of Justin, 315, n. 

Taylor, John, an extinctionist, 352. 

Tendencv of the doctrine in ques- 
tion, 404-429. 

Tennemann, G. G., on the character 
of Bayle, 42, n. ; doctrine of the 
Eleatics, 270 ; of Plato, 271 ; the 
Stoics, 285. [230, n. 

Tennyson, A., the brutes immortal, 

Tertullian, on infanticide, 11; his 
Montanism, 35 ; dualistic reason- 
ings, 36 ; utilitarian argument for 
future punishment, 105, n. ; on 
the death of Adam, 171, n. ; the 
resurrection, 249 ; the intermedi- 
ate state, 254, 255 ; censure of the 
Gnostics, 286 ; his character and 
opinions, 325-327 ; the saved re- 
joice over the lost, 326 ; germ.s of 
the doctrine of Purgatory, 327. 

Terence, his philanthropist enjoins 
infanticide, 10. [v. 11, 405. 

" Terrors," a misquotation of 2 Cor. 

Theism, defined, 25, 26; secured by 
the view of evil as temporary, 158, 
377. 

Theodicv, defined, 67, n. ; a duty, 
67-71,' 407, 408, 416-418, 446; 
twenty-two forms of, respecting 
eternal misery, examined, 67-128; 
God's own, in Matt. xxv. 42, 43, 



488 



INDEX. 



194; failure of the early Chris- 
tians to retain, 312; of Minucius 
Felix, 327: of Liulier, 347, 348; 
its reflex influence, 358 ; of Hick- 
ok, 386 ; in the doctrine of par- 
don, 397, 398. See Evil, Justice. 

Theodore of Mopsuestia, a restora- 
tionist, 325. 

Theodoret, on Eph. ii. 5 ; Col. ii. 
13; Rom. vi. 11, 175, n. ; on Heb. 
xi. 1, 177, n. ; the intermediate 
state, 235, n. ; on Rom, vi. 23, 
385, n. 

Theognostus, a restorationist, 324. 

Theologia Gerraanica, on the high- 
est good, 68, n. ; God not impas- 
sible, 76. 

Theology, four forms. Dualism, Ab- 
solutism, ISTaturalism, and Theism, 
defined, 25, 26; the "ethical," 
considered, 93, 117, 118, 378, 388, 
389 ; Arabian contributions to, 
344 ; of the feelings, 365-367. 

Theophilus, on the death of Adam, 
171, n. ; man's intermediate na- 
ture, 309; his opinions, 319, 320. 

Theophylact, angels immortal not 
by nature, 310. 

''Theory of the Moral System," no- 
tion that the universe is young, 
1.53. 

Thirlby, S., on the opinion of Jus- 
tin, .315, n. 

Tholuck, A., on the Shalmaganians, 
39 ; regards eternal evil as anti- 
theistic, 48 ; on naturalism, 65 ; 
good needs not evil, 140 ; on Rom. 
viii. 10, 175, n. ; Greek philosophy 
in Judaism, 225, n.; the etliical 
theology, 394; Anselm's view of 
the atonement, 398 ; the influence 
of heathenism, 415, n. 

Thompson, R. A., on Manichaeism, 
47; his theodicy, 120, n. ; dual- 
istic reasonings, 133, n.; censures 
a theory of future happiness, 137 ; 
argument from the atonement, 364, 
n. ; on Rom. vi. 23, 386, n. 

Thought, a form of life and happi- 
ness, 449, 4.50. 

Tillemont, L. S. le Xain de, on the 
A])Osrolic Constitutions, 296. 

Tiilotson, J., criticises a theodicy, 
73, 103 ; his theodicy, 81 ; pun- 



ishment threatened foreff'ect, 106 ; 

alleges immortality as " assumed " 

in the Scriptures, *106. [244. 
Time and Space, as related to mind, 
Tirinus, on Gen. ii. 17, 169, n., 170. 
Titus of Bostra, on the IManichae- 

ans, 60 ; a restorationist, 325. 
Tonna, Mrs. Charlotte Elizabeth, on 

the character of Josephus, 336. 
Toulrain, J., on Calvin and Socinus, 

350. 

Traducian theory of the soul, 229. 

Transmigration of the soul, 267, 
268, 270, 273 ; censured by The- 
ophylus, 320. [henna, 257, n. 

Trench, R. T., on Hades and Ge- 

Troschel, J. E., his theodicy, 99, n. 

Truth, made of little account, 279. 

Tulloch, J., sin a mystery, 21, n. ; 
ignores the question of eternal 
miseiy, 64, n. [351. 

Turnbull, R., on Locke's opinions, 

Turretin, A., on Rom. viii. 10, 175, 
n. ; on the atonement, 397, 398. 

Twisse, W., an absolutist, 67, 68 ; 
sin worse than misery, 96, n.; ex- 
tinction the greatest evil, 104, n. 

Tyndale, W., on the intermediate 
'state, 176, n., 2.54. 

Ullmann, C, the early doctrine of 
immortality, 319. 

Universe, suppo-cd to be in its 
youth, 153; this world not its 
moral centre, 154, 155, n. 

Universal welfare, as ground of a 
theodi'cy, 85-89. 

Universalism, an occasion of, 48, 
414 ; in tlie doctrine of punish- 
ment, 390-392; of pardon, 392, 
393; considered, 447, 452-456. 

Unquenchable fire, see Fire. 

Usteri, L., on Rom. viii. 10, 175, n. 

Valla, L., sin a mystery, 21, n. 

Varro, on human aspirations, 7 ; 
sanctions the pious fraud, 278. 

Vatablus, F., on Gen. ii. 17, 169. 

Ved, de, the persecution of Mai- 
monides, 340, 341. 

*■' Vestiges of the Creation," on 
Providence, 379. 

Villaume, an absolutist, 60, n. ; as- 
serts that virtue needs its opposite, 
137, 138. 

Viuet, A., regards immortality as 



INDEX. 



489 



assnraed in the Scriptures, 161 ; 
an enormous error possible, 358. 

Virtue, asserted to be hirelinp:, 105, 
106 ; consists not in outward act, 
125 ; needs not its ojipo.^ire, 137- 
141 ; a duty aside from immor- 
tal iry, 345 ; disinterested, 450- 
452 ; its true elements, 456-461. 

Yitringa, C, on Rom. viii. 10, 175, 
n.: on Isa. xxxiii. 14, 206. [n. 

Yoisin, J. de, on the Pharisees, 224, 

Wahl, — ., on Eph. ii. 1, 5; Rom. 
viii, 10 ; Rev. iii. 1, 175, n. 

"Wake, W., his rendering of uTvo)?.£ca 
altjvcog, 294, n. 

Walch, J. G., on a psuedo-Athana- 
siun book, 305, n. 

Walker, J. B., his theodicies, 104, 
n., 105, n. ; argument for the im- 
mortality of good men, 236, n. 

"Walsh, J. T., argues from opinions 
of the Pharisees, 220. 

"Walterus, argues annihilation, 353. 

"Warburton, Wm., criticises a theod- 
icy, 76. n. ; on the doctrines of the 
philosophers, 276, n. ; the pious 
fraud, 278, n. ; Chalmers' esti- 
mate of, 351 ; his opinions, 351, 
352. 

"Watson. R., cites a concession, 15; 
his theodicies, 105, n., 107, n. 

"Watt, J., his inventions employed as 
illustrations, 407-409. 

Watts, I., caution respecting belief 
in endless woe, 62, 420 ; his the- 
odicies, 72, n., 114, n.; death im- 
plies not immortality, 177 ; held 
infants not immortal, 352 ; extinc- 
tion is eternal punishment, 419; 
420 ; joy in heaven if an end of 
"woe, 415, n. 

Weisse, C. H., on the soul's im- 
mortality, 234. 253. 

Werdermann, J. C. G., his theodicy, 
114, n. ; on the "Felix culpa," 
131, 132 ; distinction between fu- 
ture and past sin, 135; the per- 
niission of evil, 149, 150 ; on 
Jewish opinions, 225, n. ; criti- 
cises an argument for immortality, 
230, n. ; perhaps an extinctionist, 
353. [230, n. 

Wesley, J., immortality of the brutes, 

Wetstein, J. J., import of gehenna, 



211; on Matt. iii. 12, 197; on 
Rom. vi. 23, 386, n. 

Wette, W. IM. L. de, annihilation 
suggested by Matt. xxv. 46, 193 ; 
on 2 Thess'. i. 9, 187; the soul 
eternal, 355 ; cited by Norton, 
356, n. ; on Rom. vi. 2-3, 386, n. ; 
atfirms self-salvation, 394. 

Whately, R., on evil temporary and 
eternal, 147 ; import of " fire " 
and "worm," 204 ; errors, why to 
be avoided, 246 ; the opinion of 
Aristotle, 276, n. ; on Pilate's 
question, 279 ; ancient doubts of 
an after-life, 281, 285 ; allows ex- 
tinction, 353. 

Whitbv, D., on Mark ix. 49, 201 ; 
on Jude, ver. 7, 202, 203. 

White, E., correspondence with J. 
Poster, 53, n. ; argues extinction, 
353. [n. 

Whitman, B., on Luke xx. 36, 161, 

Wickedness, immortal, dignity of, 
16-18. [trine* 268. 

Wilkinson, J. G., on Egyptian doc- 

WiUard, S., his theodicies, 94, n., 
101, n. ; do the lost contract new 
guilt ? 124, n. 

Williams, R., on human dignity, 
13. n., 104, n., 359. 

Williams, S. W., on Chinese doc- 
trines, 266. [177, n. 

Winer, G, B., the fitrure of prolepsis, 

AVintle, Thos., on Dan xii. 2, 186. 

Witsius, H., his theodicy, 89, n. ; on 
Jude, ver. 7, 202 ; opinion of Me- 
nasseh ben Israel, 341, n. ; extinc- 
tion is eternal ptinishment, 420, 

Woods, L., his theodicy, 114, n. 

World to come, for the righteous 
alone, 178, 179, 196, 288. 

Wrath and love, in God, 426-429. 

Wright, Wm., on the Book of Ju- 
dith, 220. 

Xenophon, on the Persian dualism, 
31 ; account of Socrates, 271. 

Young, J., sin a mystery, 21, n. ; 
Ills theodicy, 120 ; sin not of God, 
120; God permits not evil, 148 ; 
; is evil eternal ? 151, 152. 

Zend Avesta, restorationist, 267. 

Zoroaster, a moderate dualist^ 30, 
39, n,, 60; on the frailty of evil, 
142 ; a restorationist, 267. 



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nal service to the cause of that which seems to be important truth." 

" The author is a fine scholar, and writes with ability." — Central Chr. 
mrald. 

" A learned and able work." — Methodist Quarterly Review. 

" On every page it affords proof that it is the work of a scholar, who is 
"well furnished by wide reading and patient investigation, and who has the 
tnodest and reverent spirit of an earnest seeker of truth. — Unitarian Quar. 
Journal. 

"A book of great learning and subtlety." — Writer in the Bihliotheca Sacra. 

*' The candor of his statements and reasoning is admirable. . . . It is 
the most able and complete exhibition of a view which is far more likely to 
make converts in the future than Universalism. . . . The entire subject 
of future punishment needs a new discussion, by men of eminent scholarship, 
-vigorous thought, and genuine piety," — Congregational Herald. 

*' Whatever support can be contributed to this doctrine by affluent learning, 
Jcholarly culture, brilliancy and force of style, and dialectic astuteness, is 
subsidized for the purpose in this massive and compact volume. The num- 
"ber of editions it has reached, notwithstanding the immense burden of quo- 
tations from ancient and modern sources, which the author's exhaustive read- 
ing has enabled him to pack into it, evinces its power Of course, we 

have no room here to undertake a refutation of this subtle and dangerous 
"book, which is likely to promote what we believe to be one of the most threat- 
ening and pestilent heresies just now crowding upon us." — Princeton Review. 

** The appearance of the fourth edition of this book is evidence of its pop- 
ularity and its mischief. It is spiritedly written, and with considerable shoAV 
of learning and of philosophical method. A sort of halo is thrown round the 
subject by a style which, though not always transparent, is yet singularly 
elastic, copious, and vigorous." — Christian Review, 

" lilr. H. has carefully studied the literature of the controversy. The argu- 
ments are quiet, clear, and, in general, candid. 

It 5s, bv far. the ablest book we have ever read on the subject. 

" Of course, it does not convince us that the orthodox view is erroneous, 
but we can not behev© that truth will suffer by fair and candid discussion. 
. . . The book Is worthy of a careful study and of a candid answer." — Pres- 
lyterian Quarterly. 

We have here the whole literature of the question. And the reader will 
be well repaid by a masterly accumulation of testimony, as to the meaning 
and usage of tenns and the' faith of eminent Christians, through the whole 
history of the church. Also, by many worthy and truthful retlections."— 
W. M. Fernald; God in Eis Providence, p. 287. 



CHEIST OUR LIFE. The Scriptural Argument for Immortality 
through Christ alone. 168 pp., 12mo. Price 50 cts. In paper, 
30 cts. 

Able, searching, and exhaustive. The author sustains the position he has 
taken -with ability and success. — Boston Atlas. 

It exhibits the same constructive skill, sharp dialectics, copious learning, 
keen criticism, and general good temper as his former work. — Methodist Quar- 
Urly. 

A pious and learned work. — Boston Traveller. 

The conclusion legitimate, and to many minds will be conclusive. The 
book is adapted to do good. — Christian Era. 

Very closely and compactly written. . . . The thoroughness, spirit of can- 
dor and courtesy, etc. — Advent Herald. 

Whoever wishes to see whatever may be fairly and candidly urged against 
natural immortality on scriptural grounds, will find this brief work better 
adapted to his purpose than any thing beside which has come under our notice. 
— W. B. Quarterly. 

Every smcere disciple will find great help from his books; in common with 
the writings of Olshausen, Tholuck, Maurice, Kingsley, they make it very plain 
that the popular doctrine of Retribution must be reconsidered and restated. — 
Monthly Religious Magazine. 

Mr. H. is now the most prominent, as well as incomparably the ablest cham- 
pion of the "annihilation" theory of future punishment. . . . His argument, 
though not convincing to our minds, is learned, ingenious, plausible, and, in 
many respects, instructive. — Congregational Herald. 

HUMAN DESTINY. A Discussion, with Rev. Sylvanus Cobb. 
478 pp., 12mo. Price $1.00. 

It is a real mitigation of our regret [to see him in the position of an oppo- 
nent], that we find in him still the gentleman, scholar, and Christian. . . . 
Further, it is a positive satisfaction to read an argument against Universalisra 
that has something of freshness and power. — Universalist Quarterly. 

His style is lucid, compact, precise, and vigorous. Pre-eminently he is a 
man of soft Avords and hard arguments. — F. W. B. Quarterly. 

An extended discussion upon the points of difference between them; con- 
ducted in a kind tone, and with considerable fairness and thoroughness. — 
Congregationalist, 

One of marked ability on both sides. — Boston Atlas. 

There is no lack of ability on either side, though i\Ir. Hudson exhibits the 
more learning, acuteness, etc. — Congregational Herald. 

Human Destiny. Mr. H.'s Argument. 136 pp. In paper, 25 cts. 
Cloth, 44 cts. With the three following Tracts, 60 cts. 

The Rich Man and Lazarus. 24 pp. 5 cts. 

The Rights of Wrong ; or, Is Evil Eternal. With a Reply to 
Dr. Mansel. Fifth Thousand. 24 pp. 5 cts. 

Reviewers Reyie^^ed. Brief RepHes to various Criticisms and 
other Arguments. 36 pp. 10 cts. 

The Doctrine of Endless Misery an Occasion of Scepticism. 
Extracts from the Epilogue to Essays in Ecclesiastical Biog- 
raphy," by the late Sir James Stephen. With Notes by C. F. H. 
24 pp. 5 cts. 

ilUDD & CABLETOIQ", Publishers, 

130 Grand Street, New York. 



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